Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
opponents to Ada Tepe. Initially, the position of the local government
regarding the investment was not clear; those opposed to the project
feared local offi cials were leaning toward approval at an August 2005
public hearing that was packed with the company's supporters and
experts and drawing out for hours. Opponents fi nally started to object.
By the end of the meeting, the local offi cials had adopted a position
against the investment. The position of the Krumovgrad Municipal
Council was clearly staked out the next month, when it issued a unani-
mous resolution against the project, collected nearly 10,000 signatures
on a petition, and began to lobby leaders of the dominant party in the
region to oppose the project (Municipal Council of Krumovgrad 2005;
Bacheva-McGrath 2008b).
Very important was the frame that the opponents adopted both in a
media release and at that public hearing. In one of its fi rst press releases,
the NGO coalition had quoted a Turkish member of the Bulgarian Social-
ist Party as saying that “we have been resettled all of our lives, and we
will not allow ourselves to be resettled again” (Bacheva 2006). At the
meeting, after noting that no one agreed with the project,
2
a coalition
activist pointed out that the project would force farmers to move, thus
violating their rights and freedoms (Dichev 2006; Bacheva 2006). The
strength of this frame was in both its historical referent and its contem-
porary political phrasing. The ethnically Turkish population in the region
has been the subject of discrimination, including loss of land, at several
times in history (Warhola and Boteva 2003). In most recent memory
were the very controversial Bulgarization policies of the Zhivkov regime
in the 1980s that had forced approximately 344,000 of Bulgaria's Turkish
population to fl ee temporarily or permanently to Turkey (Angelov and
Marshall 2006, 10; Warhola and Boteva 2003). By noting that residents
would be forced to move or stop farming, and arguing that the local
authorities needed to protect the “rights and freedoms” of the residents,
opponents struck at the heart of the identity and claims of the Movement
for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), the political party widely recognized
as the Turkish ethnic party.
3
This party often functions as a swing party
or coalition partner for the larger parties in the political system (Rechel
2008, 2007). Adding to the importance of the general frame that gar-
nered the support of local MRF offi cials, the party was just assuming
control over the Ministry of Environment and Water at the national level.
Throughout the fall of 2005, Life for Krumovgrad and the Cyanide-
Free Bulgaria coalition continued to press their opposition to the invest-
ment. Activists from nearby prefectures in Greece and the Greek group
