Locals from villages close to the plant hail the employment opportunities it has presented
Investment in Turkey's first nuclear power plant, which is being built by Russian company Rosatom at Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast, will exceed $20 billion and provide jobs for nearly 10,000 people.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin attended the groundbreaking ceremony of Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) via a video conference call from the Presidential Complex in the capital Ankara on Tuesday.
Erdoğan said that the Turkish energy sector, which is still predominantly based on petroleum, natural gas and coal, would be healthier along with the Akkuyu NPP.
The Büyükeceli village, the closest settlement to the Akkuyu NPP that has a population of 1,200, welcomed the project. “The lottery of the century has hit us. Tea is on me!” declared a local tea shop owner in celebration of the nuclear Akkuyu NPP. Büyükeceli village is located three kilometers away from the plant.
Once the location of the Akkuyu NPP was determined, many so-called environmentalists in the EU claimed that Turkish products would be ruined and nature’s balance would be destroyed in order to provoke the public.
“However, there are nuclear power plants in their countries. Their aim is to stymie Turkey’s growth and development. They played with our future with misleading information, but the public has become aware in the past four-five years. Officials from the company who are constructing the plant held meetings with respected members from our village and explained the reality of the power plant. People were convinced. Even though construction has just started, already 100 people from our village have been hired, and 800 people from nearby villages have been employed,” said Serdar Sarı, the Büyükeceli village headman.
“This plan is Turkey’s future. The future of our youth will be brighter as a result of the investments,” said local tea shop owner Süleyman Topçu.
Another local, Mustafa Karaman, said: “My son is a security guard there. Nobody can stymie Turkey’s future. European countries and their extensions in Turkey can no longer shackle us.”
The village’s imam, a religious official, Hasan Sümbül said that he was convinced once the details of the project were explained. “The plant is an important investment in terms of enabling Turkey to have a voice in the future,” he said, adding that he as well as other imams detailed to the public that the Akkuyu NPP would be built with the latest technology and would be environmentally-friendly.
“Black propaganda is futile and meaningless,” said local Mustafa Bulut, whose sentiment was echoed by Musa Sade who said: “We grew up in poverty. I'm so happy. A very important foundation was laid in our village.”
The Akkuyu NPP project started with an intergovernmental agreement signed between Turkey and Russia on May 12, 2010. The plant, comprising of four reactors each with a capacity of 1,200 megawatts, will produce 35 billion kilowatts of electricity at full capacity, which will meet about 10 percent of Turkey's energy needs.
