Threats to rural commons and local social movements: The case of the villages of Pınargözü, Eğricek, Elkondu and Kalkım

This study focuses on the power of social movements generated by the capacity of local communities in Turkey to appropriate common assets. Commons are shared assets produced and experienced through social relations. Commons gain meaning within everyday life practices and cannot be spatially fixed. The relationship between commons and communities produces a relationship of ownership in terms of time and space. The concrete and abstract relationship that local communities establish with common assets expands the nature and meaning of these assets as commons. In this sense, commons and the act of commoning are dynamic phenomena; they are integral to the natural, social, and cultural structures of society. Capital shifts from urban to rural areas in the neoliberal era, commodifying the commons through privatization, expropriation, and enfeoffment. Streams, forests, pastures, and other resources are all targets of capital accumulation in rural areas. The assets shaping local communities' daily lives, to which they are historically and culturally connected, and on which they rely for subsistence, now face threats from capital. Capital's intervention in nature and space is transforming and severing local communities' ties to these common assets. This study examines how local communities resist threats to rural commons. It focuses on villages in the Bakırtepe region: Pınargözü, Eğricek, Elkondu, and Kalkım. In field research, the study found that the ways local communities understood the commons and the strength of their relationships with these assets directly influenced the social movement's power. Strong feelings of ownership garnered support for the movement from both local and non-local sources. Population declines, the company's consent-based strategies, and local conflicts all weakened the social movement. Restricting access to cultural commons and dispossessing communities of their livelihoods transformed rural structures and suppressed resistance.