From Shining Icons of Progress to Contested Infrastructures: 'Damming' the Munzur Valley in Eastern Turkey

International audience; Dams were once the material manifestation of progress that best expressed the power of the nation. Since 1923 Turkey has built more than 800 dams to regulate floods, provide water and produce electricity. These immobile and silent infrastructures have witnessed the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the birth of the Turkish nation and the global skirmishes of the Cold War. In Eastern Turkey's Munzur Valley --a contested space populated by Dersim's Alevi Kurds-- dams have been challenged and sometimes successfully stopped. The "Campaign to Save Munzur," in the end, reveals a broader shift in Turkey from "Red" to "Green" political activism.