How does the construction of the rural as a site of poverty in need of development by external forces impact communities’ sense of self, vision of place and notion of a good life? I will respond to this question by analyzing the representation of Turkey’s northernmost city, Sinop as a deindustrialized zone to explore how the multinational nuclear energy project envisioned by the Turkish government influences Sinop residents’ idea of who they are, their understanding of locality and their aspirations. Envisioned as one of Turkey’s first two nuclear plants -with the other one already underway in a Mediterranean city- this project is intended to provide a response to Turkey’s assumed energy shortage, while providing Sinop with a thriving industry. Understanding Sinop’s construction as a site in need of development requires evaluating this representation of deindustrialized apathy alongside Sinop’s designation as Turkey’s happiest city by the Turkish Statistics Institute based on factors such as the region’s ecological richness and slow-paced lifestyle. I will show that while these two representations appear to negate one another, they are, indeed, intertwined in their strategy to popularize and legitimize the project. Bringing together ten years of ethnographic research and archival analysis, I will illustrate how the extractivist logic imposed by external forces has resulted in paradoxical tendencies in Sinop. While Sinop residents are passionately concerned about their province’s deindustrialized state, they are as passionately opposed to the nuclear industry. While they challenge their fame as the country’s happiest city by citing deindustrialization, they base their opposition to nuclear industry on the same criteria employed by the government in the happy city rhetoric. Finally, while they take pride in the progressive politics of the province, they also espouse an isolationist discourse, which undermines their self-prescribed cosmopolitanism through a parochial sense of locality. By demonstrating how these paradoxes reveal the complexities of Sinop residents’ notions of self, place and future resulting from an externally imposed nuclear energy project, I will contribute to and complicate the understanding of extractivism and the global rural.