Paper short abstract:

Neoliberal policies embraced by the governments allow corporate powers to disconnect people from their immediate natural environments. Among many other disciplines, what discipline suits better than anthropology in questioning this disconnection and providing answers to policymakers for improvement.

Paper long abstract:

Imagine a country where on three sides it is surrounded by seas, supplied by many large and small rivers and brooks, and the government is preoccupied with privatization of all rivers and brooks across its borders for benefits from hydroelectric power. As a continuously developing country, Turkey pushes hard to be one of the emerging countries across the world as well as striving to be a prominent figure in the region. Adapting a corporate-friendly approach, the government has over-eagerly surrendered the natural resources, mainly the water, into the hands of global corporate powers, and exposed them to a wild exploitation. With increasing number of hydroelectric power plants gathering water from these rivers and brooks to collect them in pipes, each and every one of these rivers and brooks has started to break their contact with their environs and the communities living nearby. The disconnection between the nature and the society imposed by neoliberal policies can be well articulated by transformation of a water monster, Boldoroz, into a bulldozer as described by a local in the Aksu Valley of Erzurum after what they have experienced during construction of two hydroelectric power plants in their valley. This paper discusses anthropology's role in defining and leading the way to change the conditions which produce a significant break between nature and human groups, inevitably resulting in a drastic change in their cultures, with a focus on the hydroelectric power plants in the Aksu Valley which has replaced Boldoroz, the water monster, with bulldozers.