The mayor of Polatli, a suburb of Ankara, Turkey, argues that clean water is a basic human right. But until very recently, it was a right 100,000 of the town's residents did not share.
Living without drinkable water
Nesrin Coban lives with her husband, a day laborer, and her two daughters in a clean second floor apartment. She turns on the tap to do her dishes, and out comes clean, drinkable water. The dishes in her dish washer sparkle.
But it wasn't always so. Until 2007, Nesrin and 100,000 of her neighbors had to buy bottled water and lug it up stairs.
"It's made our life easier, for sure. We don't spend money on water, we trust the tap water. We used to buy water in bottles, and I trusted that less than I trust the tap now," she says.
Hanife Yildirim lives a few blocks away, in a fourth floor apartment. Her husband is retired, and she lives with two of her four kids.
"We'd buy two or three bottles for the four of us living here. That was a lot of money on our retired salary!" she says. " But now, our water is clean."