Our Campaign in English

Our 14 year old Permaculture Community Garden In Balcova, Izmir Turkey is under threat . After working as the coordinator of the Berkeley EcoHouse, I was inspired by late Karl Lin’s work on commons. With his support I started the first permaculture community garden in my hometown in Izmir 14 years ago with my mother Sema Altan, Mark Schirmer and our friends from Seed International in Australia. After an intensive 9 day workshop with the volunteers’ own financial means we established a sustainable garden that has been serving the local residents, students. Since then it has become a local beacon for connection to nature, a location to getaway from the hussle and bussle of the intense urban city- simply a piece of rare green refuge in the sea of concrete buildings. Unfortunately like most cities in Turkey, my home town Izmir is also losing its green green spaces at a great speed to poor urban planning and country wide corruption. Even though the land our garden was offered to us to establish the garden by the Mayor of Balcova Municipality in 2003, who also attended the workshops, the current mayor would rather level it and build illegally buildings on a Green Space that should be for the common green spaces. Our mission has not changed over the 14 years we have been established: It is to provide and rekindle the integral but missing connection that humans have with nature, and with their neighbors in a dense urban environment; to establish a sustainable life style by growing, eating and sharing organic vegetables and fruits, and providing workshops on permaculture, and organic gardening. The current Mayor’s office has not given any written notes but verbal threats to remove the garden, and they have cut down the trees adjacent to our garden over night. When our community gardeners requested a formal letter and a reason they were denied this. However, as the community garden volunteers, we are not going anywhere. We have to protect our common green spaces collectively. Today it is our trees, gardens, our parks; tomorrow it is your trees, your gardens, your parks. We are calling on all those who feel strongly about protecting the last open green spaces that are the lungs of our city. Please don’t remain silent, sign our petition to call on the current Balçova Mayor Mehmet Ali Çalkaya to stop his aggression towards our community garden, and to leave its surrounding olive orchards as is. Thank you, Basak Altan Founder of Balçova Ekolojik Komşu Bahçesi Koruturk Mahallesi, Sakarya Caddesi ile Bora sokak arasındaki yeşil alan Balçova, Izmir, Turkey