Helin Yıldırım/JINHA

ANTALYA – In a mountainside village in the southern Turkish province of Antalya, the old women of the town say they have watched with their own eyes as the paradise they grew up in turned into a hell.

The Alaca mountains, in the province of Antalya in southern Turkey, were long a source for oranges and pomegranates. Now, the local villages are surrounded by eleven separate quarries that villagers say have brought illness and cancer to the region.

"The dust from the stones is intense and it effects everything we eat and drink," says Emine Dinç. "Now the pomegranate and the oranges make you sick. They don't buy it in the bazaars anymore; they say it's unwholesome goods." Emine claims that local villagers did not stand up against the quarries, and now it's too late. The villagers live every day with the sound of dynamite from the quarries, which are close enough to shake the houses in the village, and with their children coughing up dust.

Abdullah Dinç, also a native of the Alaca region, says his older brother is one of those who have developed cancer from the quarry dust. He says the quarries have spelled the end of the local cedar trees. "If a normal citizen cuts down a tree, they give them a fine, but when the quarries come and cut them all down, they don't say a thing," Abdullah said. He says he and other villagers have now been struggling against the quarries for the last four years, petitioning the municipality and the provincial governor. He hopes the new parliamentary candidates can change something now.

80-year-old Ayşe Erol, who has spent the last 40 years of her life in the Alaca mountains, tears up when she looks at the mountains.

"It used to be so beautiful here," she said. "People could breathe the fresh air when they went outside, but now you can't breathe from the dust clouds. There was nothing like this in the mountains; now look what they've done."

(fk/cm)