CerenKarlıdağ/JINHA

IZMIR – The people of Izmir's Yamanlar neighborhood blocked a meeting of the municipality and government to sketch a plan for turning their neighborhood into a garbage disposal facility.Yamanlar is a working-class neighborhood predominantly occupied by Kurds and Alevis.

"We don't want a garbage disposal facility," said the signs of the citizens who occupied the lectern at the İsmail Cem Kültür Merkezi in the city's northern district of Karşıyaka. They successfully turned away municipal and governorate employees hoping to discuss the planned dump, which local Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) independent research shows would negatively affect two water reservoirs linked to Izmir's Bay, in addition to impacting neighborhood life.

"This is what they see the poor as fit for: bringing all of Izmir's trash to our neighborhood," said NeslihanBatur, a Yamanlar resident. "We want to see them build a modern, environmentally friendly facility that doesn't ruin anyone's life."

The people of Yamanlar have good reason to be apprehensive. The neighborhood ofHamandalı, home to an existing similar waste facility since 1992, has become notorious in Izmir as "Trash Mountain," a place where diseases are widespread among residents, dirty water seeps from the facility and summer is entirely unlivable thanks to the stink and flies.

Nine-year Yamanlar resident and mother of two Zeynep Kahraman says she used to work in Harmandalı, site of the existing garbage dump, and remembers being unable to open the windows due to the stink.She says the city chose Yamanlar for such a fate because it's home to an organized population of working-class Kurds and Alevis here, trying to make a life in a notoriously racist city.

"There's a logic of othering under the surface of the plan for this site," said Fatma Acar, local Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair. She said the party has pledged to defend the right of the people of Yamanlar to defend their neighborhood. The first step was their independent environmental research.

Although the citizens successfully blocked the meeting last night, the city has an environmental impact report in hand

Hanım Tosun, a 40-year Yamanlar resident, says this is just the beginning. "This is an organized neighborhood. Kurds, Alevis, workers and the poor live here and to break up our organization, they want to bring their trash here. But we will be one."

(fk/cm)