Will these pledges save Turkey's Artvin?

Dialogue should be seen as an opportunity for both sides. While monologues are identified with authority, dialogues represent an eagerness for cooperation and a wish to hear the voice of the other. The common good can only be reached through dialogue. So it is pleasing that Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu recently got together with the Artvin Green Association delegation to talk about the planned mine in Cerattepe. It is even better that he said the dialogue would continue. 

The prime minister made some promises after this meeting. He said the mine would operate with a "closed gallery" system and that a special lift would be built before the area was later reforested.   

Some people must have told the prime minister that as long as these things are completed, there will be no harm to Artvin. Unfortunately this is not true. A closed mine is less harmful to the environment than an open mine but this doesn't mean a closed gallery is a good thing. 

"The underground operation will start from the very bottom," scientist and geology engineer Tahir Öngür has said. "They will dig there and drain the underground water in order to work. To temporarily eliminate the acid of the water they will add lime paste.  But the water will acidify again. All underground water will react with sulfide minerals for 14 years, and when the water reaches its current level today it would be acidified. The worst feature of acidic water is that it carries cancerogenic minerals."

The most recent environmental impact (ÇED) report revealed with a map how the underground waters would be polluted, Öngür added.

In order to proceed just 3.5 meters in the underground galleries, miners will have to explode 130 kilos of dynamite daily. But the region has in the...