"Hey Çoruh Kederim Derinden Derin": Çevresel Dönüşümün Duygusal Coğrafyaları Ekopsikoloji ve Solastalji.

Humans have emotional responses to surrounding environmental changes and socio-ecological destruction in their lifeworld. Their deep sense of loss is exacerbated by these changes. Destructive environmental changes bring out catastrophic losses to culture, knowledge of life, livelihoods, generational knowledge, and mental and emotional well-being. For local inhabitants, the place and region constitute emotional geographies, intimate attachments, and a community-based sense of place. This paper is a case study on the emotional geographies of late capitalism, ecopsychology, and sociology of emotions in the context of geographies of ecological sorrows and farewell. This paper focuses on the environmental desolation of two tiny villages of Artvin province, in rural northeastern Anatolia, Zeytinlik (Sirya) and Oruçlu (Orcuk) that were drowned by the waters of the Deriner Dam in the Çoruh Valley. The research findings indicate that the destruction of nature and lifeworld has evoked tremendous expressions of sorrow and loss from the dislocated people living along the river. The research aims to open a debate on the negative effects of environmental change lived in the country that is not discussed in the mainstream discourse, through the individual and collective emotions experienced in the processes of witnessing the radical change of rural living spaces. The research uses an ethnographic method that allows us to extract people's discourses about their emotional experiences of certain places from books, documentaries, oral history, and literary materials that express their emotional affinity to the very same places. The findings of the research reveal that the destruction of nature and habitats causes intense expressions of sadness and loss for people living by the river. The study demonstrates that the losses of beloved lands produced by capitalist expansion also produce place-based emotional narratives of ecological loss, solastalgia, and grief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]