"Five to six tons of ore are needed to make one gold ring"

—Project Underground Fact Sheet

Support Villagers Against Eurogold / Turkey - Victory

Last November the Turkish Ministry of the Environment authorized the Eurogold companyto begin mining near gBergama, Turkey. The multinational hopes to extract 24 tons of gold overthe next eight years, using the "cyanide heap leaching" process which has contaminated water andsoils in many gold mining sites around the world. The people of the agricultural villages near Bergama are employing every recourse to stop the mine.

Global Response members are asked to urge Turkish government officials to cancel the authorization for the Eurogold mine.

The lush green hills southwest of Bergama in western Turkey support a population of 300,000 people. In the shadow of stately marble columns left by the ancient Greeks, villagers now make a living growing olives, cotton, tomatoes, potatoes, onions and tobacco, while others tend sheep and cattle.

Remembering a major earthquake that destroyed a village here in 1938, the people worry that tremors and quakes could cause leaks and spills from the Eurogold mine. A clay and polyethylene "liner" will separate their precious soil and groundwater from the "heaps" where ore is soaked in cyanide solution. "All the sites I've ever worked at experience some degree of liner leakage," reports hydrogeologist/geochemist Robert E. Moran.

It's not only cyanide that can leak into groundwater and streams. Cyanide solution is used to extract gold from ore by making it soluble, but the cyanide also makes soluble other metals in the ore - arsenic, nickel, iron, manganese, lead, zinc, uranium, mercury, cadmium, etc. These, too, can leak and contaminate water and soils. Since they do not naturally break down in the environment, as cyanide does, they pose a greater long-term threat as they accumulate in living tissue and are passed through the food chain.

"We don't want this risk," says Bergama mayor Sefa Taskin. "Eurogold will use our air and water, get our gold, and when they leave after eight years we will be stuck with the poison."

The people of eight affected villages voted in January to reject Eurogold's project. In April, 10,000 people and 1,000 tractors occupied the mine site and convinced authorities to call a 30-day moratorium on Eurogold activity. Before the end of that period, Turkey's highest court overturned the Ministry of Environment's decision to authorize the Eurogold project. The court found that Eurogold's cyanide-based mining technology is at odds with the Turkish people's constitutional rights to a healthy and intact environment and to their own physical integrity. This is a landmark ruling for environmental rights!

But it's not over yet. The case has been sent back to the state court in Izmir, and the moratorium may be lifted. The people of Bergama have sent out an urgent appeal for international support.

More information about this issue.

Make a donation for this campaign.

Write a letter for this campaign.

Campaign partner(s) and credits.