Ilisu Dam Opponents Occupy Brandenburg Gate in Berlin

Environment and Human Rights Activists today occupied the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany Berlin (14 March, 2007) - With this action, the Environment and Human Rights Organizations have protested the impending granting of an export credit guarantee by the German government for the controversial Ilisu Dam in Turkey. The dam will block the Tigris shortly before the border of Turkey with Iraq and Syria. The German company Zueblin is to profit from the German export credit guarantee.

"We have occupied the Brandenburg Gate to show the people here in Germany, what their government is currently planning in Turkey," explains activist Matthias Dittmer. "We have a couple of hundred years of history here in Berlin - the submergence of Hasankeyf would destroy a 9,000 year-old history.”

Human rights campaigner Bianca Jagger, who has been campaigning against the Ilisu dam project for nearly seven years, comments on the project from London: "On today’s World Action Day against Dams, I appeal to the Chancellor and the German government not to guarantee the funding for the Ilisu dam project. I hope the company Zueblin will reconsider their decision to be a partner in the construction of the dam, it should follow the example of the British company Balfour Beatty; the company withdrew in 2002 due to unresolved social and environmental problems. The Ilisu dam will cause great harm to the people of the area. It will lead to the forceful relocation of approximately 50,000people. The cultural patrimony of the region will be destroyed, and as a result the people will also lose their homeland and identity. It is my hope that this project will be stopped!”

"The people in South-East Turkey have experienced enough grieve with mega dams,” says Ercan Ayboga from the local Initiative to Save Hasankeyf in Berlin. "Practically all people in our region oppose the Ilisu project. We affected people want to have a say in our future and do not want the Turkish or the German government to decide what is good for us.”

"The project violates international standards and international law,” says Heike Drillisch, a spokesperson from the German NGO WEED. "This project could never be built in Germany. Our government should not support it, only because it is in Turkey. We will hold the German government accountable for the impacts of its actions.”

For images from the occupation of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, contact: Kai Schäfer, kai.schaefer@weed-online.org, 0160 - 252 8942

For further information about the action and the Ilisu project, contact:

• Heike Drillisch (WEED) +49-177-345 26 1, Heike.drillisch@weed-online.org, www.weed-online.org/ilisu

• Ercan Ayboga (Initiative zur Rettung von Hasankeyf) www.hasankeyfgirisimi.org

• Matthias Dittmer, +49-177 - 384 93 42

• Ann Kathrin Schneider, IRN, +49-163-4751284

• Regine Richter, urgewald, +49-170-2930725