Four farmers who participated in protests against power cuts by Dicle Fırat Electricity Distribution (DEDAŞ), a company responsible for electricity distribution in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish-majority province of Urfa (Riha), were sent to prison on Sunday. They were arrested after farmers in the Viranşehir (Weranşar) district set up roadblocks to draw attention to their plight.
On Saturday, two separate protests were held in response to the ongoing power cuts by DEDAŞ. Turkish law enforcers cracked down on the demonstrations, detaining over 20 farmers and confiscating their tractors.
Ten of the detained farmers appeared before a judge to face charges including “resisting [officers] in the course of their duty,” “causing damage to public property,” and “endangering traffic safety.” While six farmers were released on bail, four more were remanded in custody pending trial.
The farmers’ grievances stem from the adverse effects of the power cuts on their agricultural activities. Electricity cuts have interrupted irrigation, resulting in significant crop damage. Some areas have seen power cuts lasting up to a week, while others endure up to 12 hours of daily outages.
The situation is compounded by the fact that DEDAŞ is not only cutting the power supply to irrigation pumps, but also to nearly 100 village settlements. This leaves residents without access to essential resources such as drinking water, which relies on electricity for pumping out of the ground.
DEDAŞ, a private company that assumed electricity distribution services in Kurdish-majority southeastern provinces after privatisation in 2013, has left residents of these regions grappling with frequent blackouts.
Farmers are particularly affected by these interruptions, as they rely on electricity to draw water from underground sources in the arid region. However, DEDAŞ claims that the power cuts are a response to farmers’ unpaid bills and the company’s losses from electricity leakage.
In 2020 alone, DEDAŞ applied electricity cuts over 75 days across more than 200 villages. In 2021, instead of widespread cuts, the company conducted raids on villages accompanied by gendarmes, seizing transformers, so preventing the farmers from accessing the electricity.
Given their inability to cover the costs of high bills, farmers often resort to organising protests to highlight their difficulties and seek a resolution to their problems.
