Climate Change Gets On Peoples Agenda

As water shortages shaked two big cities, Kocaeli and Ankara respectively, we went onto streets to interrogate public reaction to global warming and climate change.

While all the people seem to know that it exists, there's a confusion regarding the causes of climate change.

Continuing high temperatures all around Turkey -as like in Europe- despite we've reached the middle of winter, raises questions in people's minds but we couldn't encounter anyone aware of the Kyoto Protocol.

Ethem Akın, 24, sells newspapers on a traveling peddler in crowded Karakoy district. He defines global warming as "increasing temperatures" and only "natural".

He finds the media coverage of global warming and the terminology confusing.

Elif Ersever, 17 and a high school student, makes a religious approach saying: "Qur'an told that as doomsday gets closer, global warming will arise. We can't prevent this".

On the hand, retired teacher Tahsin Cayir makes a good judgment, quoting industrial wastes, demolishing forests, the hole on the ozone layer and melting of the glaciers. "I know no good will come out of those and we'll face threatening situations", he adds.

While there seems to exist a political awareness on the issue, individual precautions don't come to agenda until the phenomenon begins affecting individual lives.

Three women of different generations -who wouldn't give their names- told us how global warming affects their lives.

The elder grandmother recalls her youth "when it was possible to see through the sea and witness four distinct seasons in Istanbul".

Her daughter, who lived the period when Turkey went from central policies to deregulation and neo-liberal economy during the 1980's, puts the accent on corrupt industrialization that ruined the environment.

"We shouldn't open areas near dams to habitation or to the industry, so we can have unpolluted water. Petrol engine vehicles poison our very air, everyday. We're not ready to tackle global warming".

And the granddaughter lists some solutions: "everybody must favor public transport. We should recycle".(EZO/EU)