Cyanide Using Gold Mine in to Be Closed

A department of the state council decreed on 9 July that a gold mine in the inner-Aegean province of Usak is to be closed.

The gold mine, in the town of Esme, has been managed by a Canada-based company called Eldorado Gold, and has used cyanide in order to extract the gold.

A deadline of thirty days

According to joint attorney Mehmet Horus, has informed bianet that the decision needs to be carried out within 30 days, and that he has appealed to the province governor's office to enforce the judgment within the deadline.

According to CBCnews, the company's shares went down 26 percent in value after the court decision was announced. The company has declared that it will appeal against the decision.

Horus called attention to the fact that a similar decision in the Bergama gold mine case had not been carried out: "We would like to believe that everyone has learnt a lesson from that process. Otherwise we will stop believing that Turkey is a state ruled by law".

Hundreds of third-party plaintiffs

Hundreds of people in the region, as well as the Turkey Union of Associations of Architects and Engineers, have joined the court case as third-party plaintiffs.

According to Horus, locals are angry that, despite expert reports, the mine has not been closed yet, but that they welcome the court decision.

More than a thousand people poisoned

The mine began extracting gold in May 2006. In the last year, more than a thousand people were poisoned by the cyanide used in the extraction, which seeped into the drinking water supplies. Environmentalists and locals started organising to campaign for the closure of the mine.

The government had permitted the mine to be operated without awaiting the result of the court cases. (EÜ/AG/EÜ)