Turkey: In Istanbul, Environmental Trouble on the Edge of Town

The town of Dilovasi, located some 30 kilometers from the eastern boundary of Istanbul, is a major industrial hub, home to some 150 firms, many of them heavy polluters, such as paint petrochemical factories. Recently, local residents woke up to find that a hard-to-remove sticky white substance had fallen on their town. From Bianet:

A new problem has been added to a series of environmental contaminations in the industrial area of Dilovası. The township belongs to the province of Kocaeli at the eastern tip of the Sea of Marmara about 100 km east of Istanbul.
A white sticky substance has been raining down on Dilovası for about one week now. The white precipitation cannot be washed away and has reportedly started to rain down on Hereke, another town in the region, as well on Saturday (12 November)....
....According to an announcement made by the Kocaeli Governor's Office, a sample of the white substance was taken and sent to TÜBİTAK on 9 November for an analysis. The Governor of Kocaeli, Ercan Topaca, said that the factory this substance came from was going to be closed once it would have been determined.

This is not the first time that serious environmental concerns have been raised in Dilovasi. As Eurasianet's Alexander Christie-Miller reported earlier this year, the health dangers posed by the town's industrial activity was the subject of a critical study written by an academic at a nearby university -- who then found himself the subject of a criminal investigation. From Christie-Miller's story:

What distinguishes Dilovasi from countless other industrial wastelands is local authorities’ apparent efforts to suppress a report about the devastating health consequences of industrial emissions. Earlier this year, research conducted by Professor Onur Hamzaoglu of nearby Kocaeli University revealed that traces of poisonous elements and heavy metals in the smog that often cloaks the town have made their way into the breast milk of local mothers and are present in infants’ feces.

The academic released that finding in January and now finds himself the target of a university investigation that could lead to criminal prosecution and a four-year jail term. Dilovasi Mayor Cemil Yaman, along with Ibrahim Karaosmanoglu, mayor of the nearby city of Kocaeli, filed a complaint against Hamzaoglu’s findings. The mayors, both members of the governing Justice and Development Party, told prosecutors that the professor, who chairs Kocaeli’s Public Health Department, exaggerated his findings “to stir up chaos and panic.” The investigation is proceeding as Turkey enters the home stretch of a parliamentary election campaign. Both Yaman and Karaosmanoglu did not respond EurasiaNet.org efforts to arrange interviews.

Hamzaoglu began his research in 2004 after local health authorities noticed that cancer outranked heart disease as Dilovasi’s number-one killer. The professor discovered a cancer rate more than two-and-a-half times higher than the average in Turkey; in 2006, he presented his research to the Turkish parliament, which set up a commission to investigate the problem.

The following year, the commission’s report called for an end to industrial expansion around Dilovasi. Such a recommendation met with silence from the government, which views Turkey’s robust economic growth as one of the party’s top achievements while in power.

The full article can be found here and a website dedicated to Hamzaoglu's case here.