A group of villagers from across Turkey who have spent the past two weeks protesting in front of the Turkish Parliament against a controversial bill that would allow mining operations on agricultural land used for olive cultivation began a hunger strike on Wednesday, citing government indifference to their demands, Deutsche Welle’s Turkish edition reported.
The protest is taking place in Cemal Süreya Park, located near the parliament building. Esra Işık, speaking on behalf of the group, said they had been protesting “day and night for 14 days” and accused lawmakers of ignoring their calls to scrap the bill.
“The mining law you will discuss in parliament today is our death warrant,” Işık said. “If this law passes, we will cease to exist, production will cease, the land will cease to exist, life will cease to exist.”
The proposed changes are part of an omnibus bill that would make it easier for mining projects to proceed in agricultural areas, including those protected under the 1939 Olive Cultivation Law.
The Turkish Bar Association (TBB) has joined environmental groups and local communities in opposing the legislation. “The Olive Cultivation Law, which has been attempted to be amended 10 times over the past 22 years, is once again being violated,” the TBB said in a statement read by Nur Hilal Gündüz, spokesperson for the TBB’s Urban and Environmental Law Commission.
“If this proposal is enacted in its current form, irreversible environmental damage may occur, and the principle of the rule of law will no longer exist,” the statement warned.
Tensions in parliament
Inside the parliament, the debate over the bill grew heated. Mahmut Tanal, a deputy from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), repeatedly said, “Don’t touch the olive trees, don’t touch life” during his floor speech, denouncing the bill as an assault on Turkey’s agricultural heritage.
“Olives are the memory of Anatolia and a way of life,” Tanal said.
In response Mustafa Varank, a lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and chair of the relevant parliamentary committee, criticized the opposition for what he described as obstructive behavior.
“When you say, ‘We won’t let it happen,’ we naturally say, ‘We will do it,’” Varank said, adding that no constructive counterproposals had been made during committee discussions.
Sezai Temelli, deputy group chairman of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), accused the government of serving corporate interests under the guise of national development.
“If you call the coal under olive trees strategic, then we are in trouble,” Temelli said. “Your concern here is capital.”
CHP deputy group chairman Murat Emir added that AKP lawmakers were merely rubber-stamping orders from the executive. “You can’t even change a comma without permission from the palace,” he said.
The protest and parliamentary dispute follow a long series of government attempts to circumvent Law No. 3573, The Olive Cultivation Law, which has been a major obstacle to mining projects in olive-producing regions.
In 2022 the Energy Ministry introduced a regulation that would allow mining companies to uproot olive groves for coal mining and replant them afterward. The regulation was annulled by the Council of State, Turkey’s highest administrative court, which said it contradicted the olive protection law.
In 2024, 61 residents of Muğla’s Milas district successfully challenged a provincial governor’s exemption of a bauxite mine from an environmental impact assessment (EIA). The court ruled that the mining company had not provided sufficient details about environmental harm, including how many trees would be uprooted and emphasized that the dust from mining would damage olive trees and nearby settlements.