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Paper short abstract

This work ethnographically explores how extensive quarrying operations in a mountain fissure in post-earthquake İskenderun, intended to supply materials for urban reconstruction but unexpectedly altering the famous local seasonal wind, unsettle residents’ senses of loss, recovery, and the future.

Paper long abstract

This work ethnographically explores how residents of İskenderun, a district in southern Turkey which suffered severe damage during the 2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquake, relate to the intensifying quarrying operations in the mountains surrounding their environment, aiming at supplying material for post-disaster reconstruction. These extractive operations have not only sparked ecological concern among residents living near the quarry sites, but also created a sense of collective disillusionment with recovery efforts across İskenderun, not through direct displacement or visible pollution, but through shifts in the wind. Known locally as Yarıkkaya (“cleft-rock”), a powerful seasonal wind attributed to a distinct fissure in the surrounding mountains, this atmospheric phenomenon had long been an ecological landmark for the residents of İskenderun. As quarries begin to cut into the very cleft believed to produce the wind, inhabitants interpret subtle changes in its speed, duration, and rhythm as early signs of spatial loss, growing concerned with the future of İskenderun. Rather than framing the resistance to quarrying as environmental activism in the traditional sense, this research traces a more atmospheric form of environmental sensing, one grounded in local cosmologies, seasonal rhythms, and shared visual geographies. By situating these experiences within political–ecological debates on extraction and interdisciplinary theories of atmosphere and affect, the paper argues that residents’ anticipation of Yarıkkaya’s loss constitutes a critique of the developmental teleologies underpinning reconstruction. In foregrounding wind as both meteorological and political actor, the study contributes to emerging conversations on more-than-human politics of extraction and the atmospheric dimensions of environmental justice.