Turkey has 15 thermal (coal) power plants. All of these plants are spewing toxic and dangerous fumes to the atmosphere every day, every hour. There is technology to filter the toxic cloud these plants rain on the people. However, it is much cheaper not to implement the filters and that helps the bottom line of these enterprises.

Trying to please the owners of these plants, the Turkish government of the AKP party, headed by the now president Erdoğan had given the corporations until 2021 to implement the much-needed filters.

However, the Turkish Supreme Court rejected this law which simply allowed the plants to put the health of the people and the children living around them at risk.  There was no need to wait that long to put the filters on the smokestacks.  The bill prepared by the AKP had to be redone.

The new bill prepared in 2015 by the same AKP gave until December 2019 for the implementation of these safety devices.  In return the Supreme Court accepted the December 31^st date for these filters to get applied.

But it was no surprise when in November 21, 2019 the plant owners had not done anything towards the safety of the population.  Filters were nowhere near implementation.  So, once again Erdoğan’s own ruling AKP party rose to the occasion and granted an extension.  This allowed the polluters another 2.5 years of time to continue polluting.

The capitalists and Erdoğan’s party went on a public relations campaign and filled the airs with discussion on why the filters were not really needed.  Even the CNN Turk came up with presentations, talking points and charts explaining how bad it would be for the people if the plants were forced to put pollution cleaning filters.  The CNN speaker had all the numbers of people who would become unemployed, all the cities that would get power shortages, all the days of power delivery interruptions which could be dangerous for those who needed power for their medical instruments. The message was clear:  Who needs filters when all is fine under cancer causing pollution?

Then the proposed extension law came to Erdoğan’s desk and something nobody expected happened. The law that had been going back and forth for years and that had been approved by Erdoğan before was rejected by the very same Erdoğan himself. AKP leaders started scratching their heads not understanding why their leader who had been involved with the law permitting more pollution suddenly and without any warning rejected their pollution permitting bill.

However, even without knowing the reason for rejection, those who had authored, supported, defended and pushed the bill through the chambers, discussions and votes suddenly changed their position and cheered, clapped and congratulated each other when they heard their own bill had been vetoed. If the supreme leader rejected it, there must be a supreme reason that they had not considered. All was well.

It was only a couple of days later when Erdoğan was asked the reason for rejection, he commented that he would not allow his people to be poisoned by the polluters. He, however, did not explain why he had not vetoed the original bill that gave the polluters the go-ahead and take years to implement the filters. He did not feel like going into that deep.

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