Önder Algedik

oalgedik@gazeteduvar.com.tr
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New laws to turn Turkey into a nuclear waste dump The Turkish Parliament contributed to a nuclear disaster last week. This is a risk of a future disaster. For the moment, it is a political catastrophe. And it only took 15 minutes for the parliament to pave the way for Turkey turning into a nuclear waste dump.
Turkey sees climate as money Hopefully, Turkey will be a party to the Paris Agreement. Thus, we will have a $3 billion loan. The money that should be allocated for prevention of climate change will be able to be channeled to the Kanal Istanbul project. How did Turkey burn 665 billion dollars? Turkey imported and burned 665 billion dollars’ worth of fossil fuels between 2000 and 2019. This is a story of a basic productivity regulation turning into a deadly weapon and the country does not have a ministry working on energy efficiency nor the political parties that deal with this.
Government trying to turn Turkey into cash Since the forest fires began on July 28, politicians seem to have forgotten their responsibility in parliament and are instead on summer recess. The current recess could end with the signature of only 120 deputies, but few are stepping forward. The government seems to have only one motivation and that is to turn our country into cash. Ecological danger awaits Istanbul A power plant that will burn the city’s garbage and produce electricity is announced to be opening in Istanbul. If the facility opens, Istanbul will suffer serious ecological damage. Hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic gas will be emitted into the atmosphere each year, while tens of thousands of tons of fly ash will pollute the air. Kanal Istanbul is not a project, it is a global capitalist model Kanal Istanbul is not a project, it is a global capitalist model. A parallel ‘cement-themed’ local governance in Istanbul is not the right way of opposing nor is showing hostility towards Arabs. The problems of drought and water scarcity are the points the opposition should focus on. Major opposition municipalities fail in pandemic management It has been two years since the landslide victory of the main opposition CHP in Turkey’s major cities, which was expected to change the country’s socio-political landscape. But have they really made a difference? In Turkey’s three major cities, there were no additional women’s shelters, no meaningful pandemic decisions, and only one effort at pedestrianization. While at the same time, there were 2,261 zoning/development decisions and 5 billion liras of funding allocated for asphalt works. Turkey’s climate change declaration is wrought with deception Minister of Environment and Urbanization, announced Turkey’s declaration to change the climate this week. However, there is no supporting documentation as of yet. There is only a PowerPoint presentation. And it looks more like a cover for a plan to increase the country’s carbon emissions. It makes a commitment to a high number of new demolitions by 2030; equivalent to the amount of demolitions carried out between 1990 and 2020. Waste and greed to merge in Turkey's new environmental law This week, a bill for the Turkish Environment Agency will be debated at the parliament. This bill will recycle the profits of recyclable waste using a process that will make it even more profitable. The opposition should make efforts to stop this, but this will be difficult for them with their current neoliberal mindset. What happened to the earthquake special taxes in Turkey? The AK Party has spent 1 lira of each 2 lira it has spent in İzmir on asphalt and concrete. The money collected up to now, which corresponds to 140 billion lira, has not been spent on the issue of earthquakes. Electricity distribution and production scandals in Turkey In Turkey, whilst considering the economy, people don’t matter. What matters it whether or not it is controlled. Electricity too is controlled, manipulated and instrumentalised. Consumers do not matter, but there is an abundance of capital transfer. Ankara is doing everything for the contractor, not the pandemic Today, Ankara is not Wuhan. Wuhan is a good example compared to our capital city. Today, Ankara is a construction site. Ankara residents have to remind the city again that they do not want a municipal administration that works for contractors — alongside a presidential system that works for contractors. The scandals behind the gas discovery announcement of Erdoğan This good news about the discovery of natural gas reserves in the Black Sea at the same time means a disaster for the environment. Turkey is a country in which environmental protection standards are very low, and it cannot control even this. This project will be the end of the Black Sea. Good Party, Turkish Parliament’s most critical party As Turkish politics have been reduced to a binary dichotomy between the government bloc and the opposition, İYİ Party plays a somewhat unifying and dampening effect in that regard. But while the government is out of touch with the people, the opposition is not tuned in with it either. The coronavirus report card for Turkey's municipalities In the past four months, none of our municipalities prepared the infrastructure for washing our hands. They were not able to meet the sidewalk conditions of 1.5 meters width for the social distancing of pedestrians. Almost all of our 1,397 municipalities have failed according to these criteria, including opposition ones. Five reasons not to go to shopping malls in Turkey Even though there are now 163,000 cases detected in Turkey and even more cases that are undetected, the malls are opening. At what cost and for whose sake they are opening? It is quite apparent that they are not opening for our sake; the data is clear. When you review the equation from the point of view of the novel coronavirus, then you have five huge reasons not to step inside these malls. 700,000 tons of asphalt paved in Turkey during the pandemic In Turkey, the pandemic seems to have also opened asphalt season for some local administrations. Municipalities regarded this period as a huge opportunity to pave asphalt. The hidden confessions in Turkey's strategic energy plan The Energy Ministry’s 2019-2023 Strategic Plan tells us a lot about the government's intentions. It is obviously a plan that still insists on coal and hydroelectric power policies, and that has solar and wind energy only as an accessory. The climate crisis is not even mentioned. Turkish government loves the coronavirus The first coronavirus month in Turkey will be recorded in history as the month of opportunism, the month of abusing a pandemic. It kept some of its people at home and others at mines and factories, turning the country into a labor camp. Only the local administrations were left, but there were policies to curb their powers as well. Istanbul Airport, the entry gate of COVID-19, should be closed As a host to 85 percent of all international travels, Istanbul has become an attraction center for coronavirus. And as a host to 38 percent of Turkey’s domestic travels, Istanbul spread the virus to the rest of the country. Politics in Turkey is failing during the coronavirus outbreak The Turkish government has not taken steps related to the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak. They actually took steps in the opposite direction asking people to do their own homework and resisting a total lockdown in the country. Meanwhile, the opposition self-quarantined itself politically. Global warming, the coronavirus and Turkey Both the stage that the capitalism has reached globally and Turkey’s implementation of it, cannot be neglected while discussing the underlying factors which tie the climate crisis and the COVID-19 outbreak to each other. Lack of intent in Turkey to tackle the climate crisis In 2019, the number of issues broke the record with 935 extreme meteorological issues recorded in Turkey. That's 9 times the overall number recorded for the second half of the 20th century. Last year, floods occurred in cities including Ordu, Düzce, Trabzon, Antalya and Mersin that cost the lives of many people. Who is gaining what in the Syrian war? While Russia needs to sell its energy to Turkey, the US must stay within the Middle East to get its oil. That is why they are both seeking Turkey on their side.At the moment, Turkey is paying for the Syrian war with its loved ones and poverty. It is only by achieving peace with its neighbors that we can attain a win-win situation. How was the earthquake relief money spent in Elazığ? Thanks to a Special Communication Tax that was introduced after the 1999 earthquake, some 67.5 billion Turkish Liras have been collected up to now for earthquake relief. But rather than on earthquake preparedness, the money was largely spent on construction projects. Our dear Turkish companies are also buying Kanal Istanbul land Kanal Istanbul is a project based on unjust profit-earning that is well-known first to Turkish companies, followed by Arab, European, and even Pakistani capital owners. But we still don’t know the full truth of what is going on with the project. Good that we do not know, because if we did, the Kanal Istanbul project would end immediately. The evolution of the trash can in Turkey According to OECD data, Turkey allocated 289 million dollars for waste management in 2008. Ever since, the country has developed and grown, right? Despite this, the money allocated for waste management fell to 147 million dollars in 2015. We have a government that does not want to manage waste and spend money on it. Burying trash is easy; the soil is free. The great lie of Istanbul President Erdoğan's government recently suffered two fiascos, one involved thermal power plants while the other had to do with a plan to rescue the private company “Simit Sarayı”. So why would it press forward with the Kanal Istanbul project? All coal plants can be shut down! It is possible for us to close down all coal mines! The way to this has been paved with the veto on the proposed bill. But if we leave public policy unattended and representatives continue to leave parliament seats empty, the opposite will happen. I should point out as a warning that, just like the Environment and City Planning Minister could actually be referring to the business schedule when he says “we installed a filter in 6 months,” a similar wordplay could be at hand with the veto. We will go after the answer together, I promise. The tax on plastic bags is a boon for the government We know how much the ministry earned from shopping bags in the first nine months of the year. At 25 kuruş (cents) for each nylon bag, 15 kuruş were deposited to the ministry and the total was 188 million lira. You heard it right, 18.8 billion kuruş.