With a 2,000-year history, the western Turkish city of Bursa is famous for the drinking fountains that draw on waters from nearby Uludağ mountain. Today, however, privatisation has turned this water into a commodity, and Bursa’s fountains are under threat.
Nestled in the hills of what was known as Mysian Olympus in ancient times, Bursa has been home to the kingdoms of Bithynia and Lydia, and was ruled by the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Byzantines and the Ottoman Empire. The city’s abundant water resources are part of the reason why it has been so appealing to different civilisations across time.
Springs flowing from the base of Uludağ were first channelled into the city in 202 BC as a result of efforts by the Carthaginian general and statesman Hannibal. A cement pipe system allowed for water to reach homes across the city for centuries.
“Not that this city needs fountains, but good Samaritans have commissioned 2,065 fountains across the city for travelers,” noted famous explorer Evliya Çelebi during a visit to Bursa in 1640. “Every corner in downtown and the bazaar have two sinks with water flowing as sweet as sugar. Water comes out one sink and onto the other. There are 23,000 families in town who also have their personal fountains.”
Then, the Ottomans built dozens of fountains across Bursa, bringing the waters of Uludağ directly to the streets of the city.
Over the past two decades, however, the number of private water bottling facilities in the city has rocketed, with the number of licensed companies soaring from three to 28.
Despite being legally responsible for protecting public access to cheap and clean water, Bursa’s municipal authority has become part of the commercial network. In 2018, a bottling plant run by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) municipality opened in the Kestel district of Bursa province. Muradiye Water, as the product is branded, is named after a historic district of the city.
“As [Ottoman explorer] Evliya Çelebi said, Bursa is made of water. We are not only sharing the best quality water with our public, but we are also responsible for sharing these commercial resources with the rest of Turkey and the world,” said Bursa’s mayor, Alinur Aktaş, on the plant’s opening.“Our metropolitan municipality basically put forth a brand, a vision. I believe that this vision will spread all across Turkey.”
Two years later, the municipality announced the launch of a new brand, Bursa Water, revealed in November 2020 when Aktaş said that they were hoping to claim a larger portion of the market with the new company.
“There’s a personal consumption of 149 litres of packaged water in Turkey each year, with 68 litres being water bottles and the rest from water coolers,” the mayor said. “There are about 400 water factories in our country, and 28 of those are located in our city. Our calculations show that 450 million litres of water, worth about 250 million liras, are available annually in our city.”
Murat Demir is a representative of the Association for the Protection of Nature and Environment (DOĞADER), which has been a staunch critic of the municipal water business.
“Bursa has been known as the ‘city of water’ throughout history, but the climate crisis and malpractice has polluted and consumed Bursa’s water over time,” he said.
As water from Bursa is sold across Turkey and internationally, it is becoming an increasingly scarce resource. According to figures from the chamber of meteorologists, precipitation has fallen by 38 per cent in the last 90 years, with 2019 being the driest year on record during this period. In November 2021, Bursa’s reservoirs had shrunk by as much as 40 per cent, while investment in public water fountains has also fallen in recent years.
At the launch in November 2020, Aktaş stressed that commercial activity posed no threat to Bursa’s water supply.
“The spring water being bottled at the moment is only 2.74 per cent of our city’s water demand,” he said. “This is all to say that the water bottling facilities have no negative impact on Bursa’s water spring resources. Besides, the spring water being processed in these facilities comes from outside the scope of our reservoirs.”
In 2014, the municipality launched a public information campaign with the slogan “drink water from fountains”. Aktaş claimed that the municipality stood by this ambition, and that its commercial activities were part of an attempt to regulate the market.
“I want you to know that we stand behind the slogan,” he said. “We are using the BUSKI city water [the municipal water board] to offer our public fully health-guaranteed water. However, there’s still consumption of bottled water outside of the home. This is why we want to offer a safe alternative to consumers.”
Although reliable data on the number of public water sources is not available, several historic fountains have either been closed off or seen their supply dwindle. Bursa’s Dibekli Masjid, Armutlu and Kavaklı Mosque fountains are three notable examples.
According to Raif Kaplanoğlu, a local historian, there were nearly 600 functioning street fountains in Bursa in the 1900s. The structures played a significant role in the Ottoman Empire’s urban planning policy.
City water in Bursa started to serve homes around 1918, and a 1957 municipality report shows that the construction of fountains continued even under the Turkish Republic. The report noted 20 public fountains were built in residential neighborhoods to accommodate the needs of any locals who didn’t yet have plumbing in their homes.
Blaming the water-bottling facilities alone for the slow decline of fountains would be wrong, Kaplanoğlu said, adding that the spread of piped water was a longer-term factor – combined with the authorities’ inaction when it came to preserving historically significant structures.
“Bursa has lost many of its values in the past 40 to 50 years,” Kaplanoğlu said. “There’s almost no more greenery, peaches or chestnuts here anymore. The historical identity of the city is also at risk. We can’t protect the flowing waters, a symbol of the city. We’ve started to lose the city’s springs and fountains, one of its core values. There were almost 600 fountains in the city at the turn of the century, but we were only able to save 30 or 40 from turning into ruins.”
The fountains not only provide stray animals, street workers or homeless residents with water, but also hold a significant role in the city’s identity. For residents like Yunus Sertkaya, the destruction of street fountains represents the disappearance of childhood memories.
“Our first stop as soon as we got out of the house as kids would be the street fountain. We would run around and play in the fountain square. It was almost a gathering place for us. We didn’t have to stop playing to go home or to the store to drink water either. One time, I dropped all the newspaper coupons I collected for a pair of rollerblades in the water when I was at the fountain, that was a sad memory,” Sertkaya said.
Researcher and author Güney Özkılınç agreed that fountains played an important role in people’s emotion connection to their environment.
. “Fountains represent helpfulness, sharing and care given to human life,” he told Inside Turkey. “They are comforting to the future as all other historical structures in cities are. They whisper to new generations the beauty of being ‘graceful like water,’ the scriptures and patterns on their tiles and fronts beautify the city landscape. Fountains may seem arbitrary today, but they are documents of our civilization.”