By Çağla Ay, Anthropology Department, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“Are you aware of the value of bees for other species’ lives?” [Bir arının canlı yaşamı için ne kadar değerli olduğunun farkında mısınız?] said Orhan, a beekeeper in his 60s, his hands were shaking as he was holding the microphone with both hands. Beekeeping is one of the major trades in the Ernez village in Finike, a small ancient town in southern Turkey. There was a grateful tone in Orhan’s voice as he was gently trying to convince visitors who came to his village. The visitors were representatives of a marble quarry project, whose responsibility was to assess locals’ reactions to the construction of a quarry. They consisted of three groups: (1) representatives of the Turkish Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change (TMEUC); (2) the marble company seeking to establish a mining zone in the Ernez village, and (3) the private corporation tasked with the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) [Çevresel Etki Değerlendirmesi] report and its presentation to the public. In drawing visitors’ attention to the “value of bees”, Orhan wasn’t only making an argument about the economic value of bees. He was also conveying an appreciation and awareness of the work that bees do to maintain Ernez’s livelihoods.
This essay[i] examines the struggle of Ernez beekeepers and the ways that they use the temporality of bee lives in a public participation meeting to resist an extractivist project proposed for their village. It consists of two main parts. First, I focus on the public participation meetings in Ernez and local struggles against weakening environmental protections in Turkey. Then, I grapple with the beekeepers’ strategic use of bees’ lifetime and the paradox that comes forth in their struggle for (multispecies) justice against the makings of neoliberal extractivism in Ernez.
Marble quarries in Finike. Photo source CnnTurk, 2018.
Intensified Extractivism and Implications of Public Participation Meeting
In 2017, an environmentalist couple in their 70s were murdered in Finike due to their struggle against the mining and marble quarries in the region[ii]. Their assassination manifests the aggressiveness of the mining and marble industry which has been progressively facilitated by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s and AKP’s (Turkish acronym for the Justice and Development Party) neoliberal authoritarianism in Turkey in the last two decades (Adaman et. al., 2017, 2019; Göçek, 2018). Despite growing protests against new mining and marble quarries, requests for licenses for new projects are still increasing day by day, manifesting an intensified extractivism under Erdoğan’s regime. The total number of proposed projects has increased by 840 percent in 2021 since AKP came to power in 2002 and among those, the mining and oil sectors have the biggest share (TMEUC, 2023). As discussed below, these projects not only threaten the local economy in the regions where quarries are done; they also irreversibly damage the subjected ecologies. One of these projects was proposed for the Ernez village of Finike, and a public participation meeting [halkın katılımı toplantısı] was held as part of the EIA process.[iii]
Intensified extractivism under the AKP regime in Turkey has led to the weakening of the force that EIA processes. Public participation meetings used to serve as safeguards for environmental protection and local communities in the last decade. Since they came into force in 1993, public participation meetings have been organized as part of the EIA processes per Article 56 of the Turkish constitution to inform the people living in area of the project and to assess their reactions, in a setting that is intended to appear democratic. Increasingly, however, EIA processes have no effect and rarely result in the denial of new mining projects, gradually weakening environmental protection across the country. One of the most important indicators of this is the increase in the number of EIA-exempt decisions during the AKP administration (Şahin, 2019: 181-3). In the last years, locals and environmentalists who contest the rent-seeking agendas of companies have been filing lawsuits against these EIA exemption decisions. In the meantime, in projects for which an EIA exemption decision has not been made (yet), the public participation meetings continue to be held within the scope of the EIA initiation process with varying degrees of success against the extractivist proposals (e.g., mining, coal or real estate projects, etc.). Still, these meetings have an important function in terms of setting the agenda and raising awareness about extractivist projects (182), hence the vehemence of the meeting in Ernez discussed below.
The Meeting in the Ernez Village
The public participation meeting in Ernez, under a plane tree that is known to be 560 years old. Photo by author, 2023.
With distrust in the project and skepticism about the role of public participation meetings, Ernez villagers tried to defend their local economy and the ecological integrity of Ernez as they know it. It was possible to see in their comments that they were well aware of the decreased power of the public participation meetings in protecting the environment and local communities; there was an apparent distrust of the state officials as well as the mining project stakeholders. “Is this speaker even working?” [Bu hoparlör çalışıyor mu ki?] said Ahmet, a villager in his 60s who was sitting next to me. The discontented tone in his voice implied that the organizers did not even bother ensuring the villagers could hear them. Yet the people of the village patiently listened to the presentations while offering tea to their visitors. When it was their turn to comment on the project after the presentation, the villagers explained the problems they had been facing due to the current mining zones around their region. As villagers were going over the hazards of the proposed project one by one, some villagers were losing their patience. Doubting that their complaints were going to be formally delivered, several people ended their comments with determined chants of “We-Do-Not-Want-a-Marble-Quary-In-Our-Village” [Köyümüzde-Mermer-Ocağı-Is-te-mi-yo-ruz!]. Ernez villagers had prepared speeches and banners, and invited other people to the meeting to ensure an effective, collective response to a marble quarry project through, and despite, a weakened EIA process. The consent-building strategy of the marble company, which is based on the alleged short-term economic returns of the proposed quarry project, was thus losing out against what appeared to be an organized will of the local community.
Villagers’ reactions against the marble project were rooted in the multiple environmental and economic hazards they have been already facing due to the existing marble quarries in the Finike region. The most important of these is the risks caused by the cutting of the extracted materials with no solution for the particles that get released into the air. These particles cause diseases such as welder’s lung (Silicosis disease) and various allergies in humans. Goats and bees living in the region and the flora formed by olive groves and cedar trees are adversely affected as well. Mining and marble quarry projects are generally given long-term licenses of 50 years. In most cases, however, the companies consume the licensed reserves in the region in a shorter period, and thus often complete their projects in less than 50 years. Nevertheless, although at the end of their project the companies are obliged to afforest the area where they excavate, a majority of them leave the area without any attempt at afforestation, nor a management plan for the solid and liquid wastes they produce. But what moves alongside a marble particle as it dissolves into air, where does it travel, and at what cost?[iv]
Bees’ Lifespan as a Politicized Temporality
The effects of the marble quarry project cuts across bees, flora, and humans. Beekeeping in Ernez has therefore been threatened by the proposed marble quarry as well, which provoked beekeepers in the village to oppose the project. Beekeepers are possibly more ardent opponents of the project than their fellow villagers. It is therefore important to pay attention to their collective action as part of a larger struggle against intensified extractivism under Erdoğan’s regime in Turkey. In drawing attention to the effects of quarries on bees, beekeepers simultaneously contests the perception of temporality that informs the narratives of the marble company that is fixated on the short-term economic consequences of the project. In so doing, it reveals insightful paradoxes about environmentalism and justice, which are discussed below.
“There is a close relationship between topography, climate, flora, hydrographic situation and beekeeping” states an EIA report on the repercussions of a mining project in northern Turkey (Expert Report, 2021[v]), and it explains its potential hazards for bees which resonate with the Ernez beekeepers’ points and concerns. Defining bees as a “social group”, the report suggests that noise from the mining projects can “stress the bees” and that the hives would ultimately need to be transferred to somewhere far from the project location. The report elucidates how bees make honey from materials they collect from wildflowers, forests, fruit trees, and other cultivated plants. According to this report, the dust that gets released into the air in the mining zones would coat the plants’ leaves and flowers and thereby fill their stomas, ultimately blocking gas exchange and pollination. It warns that this would decrease the productivity of flowers (to generate nectar) and therefore bees would not be able to collect as much nectar, resulting in lower honey production. Despite this report, the mining project went ahead and bees have been dying — a consequence that villagers attribute to the “poisoning” of the nectars and the bees by marble particles.
Ernez beekeepers, too, were worried how these consequences might affect their livelihood. “A pure white, two-millimeter layer formed at the bottom of the jar”, a beekeeper described a glass jar of Ernez honey. “When you pour this honey and take that layer with a spoon, what you see is a stone. So, the bee carries it, and after filtering the honey, it can sit at the bottom of the jar over time. Who would eat this honey? To whom I can sell it?” [Kavanozun tabanında bembeyaz, iki milimlik bir katman oluştu. Bu balı döküp, onu kaşıkla aldığınız zaman karşınızda taş olur. Yani bunu arı taşıyor, süzdükten sonra kavanozda zaman içerisinde zemine oturabiliyor. Bu balı kim yer? Kime satabilirim?]. Alongside this beekeeper’s narrative was a strategy informed by an understanding of the “value of a bee’s life” that Orhan referred to at the beginning.
In seeking to elucidate the long-term effects of the proposed marble project, Ernez beekeepers drew attention to the lifespan of worker bees. In doing so, they challenged the temporality that informs extractivist agendas, which are fixated on the short-term economic consequences of mining. “I only have 40 days of life, do not touch me!” [40 gün ömrüm var, bana dokunma!] read a banner held by an old woman sitting on the platform, silently protesting the visitors. By drawing attention to the already short lives of bees, the protestors were claiming for bees’ right to live. In other words, the shortness of bee lifespans made it so that it must be saved from the marble particles. Beekeepers were thus ultimately acknowledging that for the dying bees the quarry would have a fatal effect, not despite but because of the shortness of bee life.
”I only have 40 days of life, do not touch me!” [40 gün ömrüm var, bana dokunma!]. Photo courtesy of anonymous beekeeper, 2023
Extending Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism by applying it to nonhumans, Kosek (2018) analyzes the “commodification” of bees by highlighting the process that erases particular materialities of bee lifespans and turns them into a “marketable abstract form” (167) and ultimately into industrial workers. In Ernez, however, beekeeping is a small-scale trade, and bee work is harnessed as honey to be sold on the market. But here this paper attempts to move beyond the question of the commodification of the bees, to tackle the extent of extractivism and its “unintended consequences”[vi] in Ernez.
As quarry projects irreversibly transform the flora in and around the Finike region, they consequently alter the lives of bees. The project proposed for the Ernez village threatens bees with their ultimate death. In other words, no longer able to take pure nourishment from the transformed plants, bees would “fail” their commodification in this context. A paradox thus appears. The transformed flora and the possibility of bee death confront beekeepers and the marble project stakeholders, who both hope to extract value from Ernez through different means and at divergent scales. In the case of Ernez, competing practices of value extraction (from a marble quarry and from honey bees) collide.
In defending their livelihood, Ernez beekeepers were also conveying the appreciation and care they have for bees. They strategically use the bee’s lifespan as an excuse to be saved from the mining project; “A bee already lives a short life, it deserves to live it”, a protest banner reads. The beekeepers seek justice for the bees, but this justice simultaneously incorporates capitalist ways of thinking about other species. Ernez beekeepers therefore imagine and call for a form of justice that exceeds modern, human-centric frameworks, a “multiple species of justice” as suggested by Sophie Chao and colleagues (2022:4) against an ever-growing extractivist force under Erdoğan’s regime. Yet, nonetheless, Ernez beekeepers also show how, paradoxically, the bees and beekeepers need each other to survive in a capitalist system, now under threat by mining.
[i] I have presented a different version of this paper at the Critical Agrarian Studies in the 21st Century International Conference at the China Agricultural University in Beijing, China in October 2023.
[ii] The Büyüknohutçu Documentary [Büyüknohutçu Belgeseli] (SLOT Media, 2021) sheds light on the inconsistencies of the Finike Public Prosecution Office’s hasty decision to close the case despite the evidence revealing the murder of the Büyüknohutçu couple.
[iii] I reported the EIA meeting in Ernez and briefly discussed its implications in a news piece. See https://www.evrensel.net/haber/492999/finike-halki-tas-ve-mermer-ocagi-istemiyor [Accessed, August 24, 2023]
[iv] Simone Müller’s and Livia Cahn’s invitation to the workshop titled “Misplacing matter? Vertical practices and (hi)stories of space and power“ has inspired me to think of extracted matters in this way. See the following for a reference. https://boku.ac.at/fileadmin/data/themen/Zentrum_fuer_Umweltgeschichte/News/2023_News/Misplacing_matter._Vertical_practices_and__hi_stories_of_space_and_power_Sep2023.pdf [Accessed, August 25, 2023].
[v] Unfortunately, the full export report is inaccessible. Please see Oda TV (2022) and Turkish Bar Association (2021: 4) for references to this report.
[vi] Alex Blanchette (2015) and Jake Kosek (2018) illustrate and examine these unintended transformations, in industrial porks and bees, respectively.
Work Cited
Adaman, F., Akbulut, B., Arsel, M. (Ed.) 2017. Neoliberal Turkey and its Discontents: Economic Policyand the Environment under Erdogan. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Adaman, F., Arsel, M., Akbulut, B. 2019. “Neoliberal developmentalism, authoritarian populism, and extractivism in the countryside: the Soma mining disaster in Turkey”, The Journal of Peasant Studies 46(3):514-536.
Blanchette A. 2015. “Herding species: biosecurity, posthuman labor, and the American industrial
pig” Cultural Anthropology, 30:640–69.
Chao, S., Bolender, K., Kirksey, E. Edt. 2022. The Promise of Multispecies Justice. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.
Göçek, F.M. Ed.. 2018. Contested Spaces in Contemporary Turkey: Environmental, Urban and
Secular Politics (Library of Modern Turkey). London, New York: I.B. Tauris.
Kosek, J. 2010. “Ecologies of Empire: On the New Uses of the Honeybee.” Cultural
Anthropology 25 (4): 650–78.
__________2018. “Industrial Materials: Labor, Landscapes, and the Industrial Honeybee” in Besky, S., Blanchette, A. Eds. 2018. How Nature Works: Rethinking Labor on a Troubled Planet. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, p. 149-168.
Oda Tv, 2022. “İkizdere’de taş ocağı nedeniyle arıların öleceği 4 ay önce raporlandı”, https://www.odatv4.com/guncel/ikizderede-tas-ocagi-nedeniyle-arilarin-olecegi-4-ay-once-raporlandi-235078 [Accessed, Ocrober 20, 2023].
Turkish Bar Association, 2021. “Environment and Urban Commission Bulletin, 2021”, https://d.barobirlik.org.tr/chkbulten/sayi5/ [Accessed, October 20, 2023].
Çağla Ay is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research interests include critical agrarian studies, postcolonial\ decolonial STS, and environmental anthropology. Çağla’s dissertation research traces various modalities of an orange variety to understand the agricultural knowledge and world-making practices the species reflects and engages in with its materiality. The research combines historical research with an over 16-month-long multi-sited ethnography, and as part of it she is currently working with farm workers and farmers in citrus orchards and factories in a small town in southern Turkey.
Engagement 