Politics ablaze as forests burn in Turkey

Farmers herding their livestock away from an approaching wildfire in Turkey (Yasin Akgul/Getty Images/AFP)

The ruling Justice and Development Party's inadequate preparedness and apparent poor and slow response to the large-scale devastating wildfires ravaging the country has unleashed a fresh political debate in Turkey. By Ayşe Karabat in Istanbul

By Ayşe Karabat

After battling wildfires for two weeks, Turkey has brought most of the fires under control. However, the government's apparent poor response to the disaster has plunged the already highly explosive political environment into further upheaval.

The wildfires damaged tens of thousands of hectares of forest, killing eight people and thousands of animals. The majority of the over 450 fires that burned across Turkey were in the country's south and west, most of them in areas run by opposition parties.

Who is responsible?

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has argued that the responsibility for putting out the fires lies with the metropolitan municipalities in residential areas. Meanwhile, opposition mayors in the affected areas called on the government to help by sending aerial support.

"The state should fulfil its responsibilities and save the people from this suffering. We're begging you," the mayor of Milas near Bodrum, Muhammet Tokat, said in a video on 2 August.

ÇÖKERTME bölgesinde yaşanan son gelişmeleri sizlerle paylaşıyorum.#havadandestekistiyoruz #milasyaniyor pic.twitter.com/JG8uZb1F3z

— Av. Muhammet Tokat (@MuhammetTokat48) August 2, 2021

A similar call came from Muhittin Böcek, the mayor of Antalya, Turkey's tourist hub and a major agricultural region on the Mediterranean coast. In a video, he said the fire had reached residential areas and called on all authorities to provide aerial support.

As it turned out, Turkey does not have a usable firefighting aircraft fleet.

Erdoğan, whose presidential office has eight private planes, argued that the Turkish Aeronautical Association (THK), which was established as a non-profit organisation in 1925 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, and whose planes had been used to fight fires for decades until 2019, did not have any planes that could fly safely.

In 2019, the government blocked the THK from bidding on fire management tenders by demanding that the planes can carry at least 5,000 litres of water, a little above the 4,900-litre capacity of the THK planes. In 2021, the government awarded the contract to a company with three aeroplanes rented from Russia, each with a capacity of 5,000 litres.

The THK does not receive government funding, but used to have the legal monopoly over collecting the skins of sacrificed animals during Eid festivals. However, it lost this monopoly to Islamic charities. Its administration was left to a trustee, Cenap Asçı, who was Erdoğan's trade and customs minister in 2015. Aşçı said an investment of $4 million is needed to ready the THK's planes. He also drew criticism for attending a wedding ceremony when he should have been answering the calls of the mayors who begged for aerial help.

Later, Turkey rented three fire-fighting planes from Russia. Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Iran also sent planes. After a four-day delay, the government also accepted an offer of help from the EU.

The village of Kalemler in Antalya was badly damaged by fire (photo: Serkan Ocal) — After desperate calls from mayors, local authorities and private citizens, Turkey rented three fire-fighting planes from Russia. "Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Iran also sent planes. After a four-day delay, the government also accepted an offer of help from the EU," writes Ayşe Karabat. While many of the fires are now under control, newly emerging fires burned down houses and forced neighbourhoods to be evacuated in south-western Turkey on 11 August, two weeks after the "worst wildfires in our history" started, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Bekir Pakdemirli said. Pictured here: buildings and cars in the village of Kalemler, Antalya, that were badly damaged by the fire

"Help Turkey"

Starting on 1 August, there was a storm of social media posts calling for help using the hashtag "Help Turkey". The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office responded by launching a probe into these posts for asking for help from foreign countries.

According to the prosecutor's office, some social media accounts and media outlets "tried creating panic" by using this hashtag.

The probe came after an angry tweet by Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun, who claimed that the "so-called campaign" was launched from abroad "for ideological reasons to make our state weak and to weaken the unity of our state and the nation."

On 3 August, Turkey's media watchdog, the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), made a similar complaint, saying that fire-fighting teams had succeeded in putting out the wildfires and that broadcasters claiming otherwise were looking to cause chaos and should bear repercussions.

Olive trees burning in Turkey (photo: Serkan Ocal/DW) — More than 66,000 hectares of forest have been wiped out in Mugla province alone so far this summer, and authorities are only just beginning to assess the damage sustained nationwide from at least 275 fires in some 53 provinces. The fires took a heavy toll on wildlife too. According to Minister Pakdemirli, in seven cities where damage assessment has been finished, nearly 5,000 cattle, some 8,000 beehives and around 30,000 bird types have been wiped out. Pictured here: olive trees burning in Turkey

Hunting down the culprit

Some citizens responded before RTÜK could even intervene. On 5 August, a group attacked the crew of the pro-opposition Halk TV channel, which is affiliated to the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), during a live broadcast from the Marmaris district of Muğla, which has been hit hard by the fires.

The five attackers said in their testimonies that they wanted to stop the "lies being uttered in a way that placed the blame on the state" before being released from detention.

Three days before the attack, in the same place, Erdoğan had delivered a speech to the public and later tossed bags of tea to citizens from where he stood on the platform. His action quickly unleashed unbridled anger on social media, with many finding it derogatory and inappropriate. CHP group deputy chair Engin Özkoç said the president and those receiving the bags of tea should be "ashamed".

Memleket yanarken Erdoğan, Marmaris'te vatandaşlara çay fırlattı.

ATAN DA, ALAN DA UTANMALIDIR! pic.twitter.com/yEJ2nv4tN4

— Engin Özkoç (@enginozkoc) July 31, 2021

Another vigilante attack by citizens took place in the fire-hit Gazipaşa district of Antalya.

Here, groups of people armed with shotguns erected roadblocks and carried out checks. This came after certain nationalist social media accounts claimed that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was responsible for setting the forests on fire. In a separate incident in the Milas district of the Aegean province of Muğla, journalist Metin Yoksu described how the road was blocked by angry citizens.

Despite the fact that several scientists have said that the fires are most likely a result of the climate crisis, the government suggested that the wildfires could also be a terrorist attack.

Climate crisis leads to a political crisis

Turkey is one of only six countries that has not yet ratified the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. It claims that it has been unfairly categorised in the convention protocols as a developed economy and says that the government won't sign the agreement unless Turkey is treated as a developing country.

CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has promised to prepare a master plan to tackle what he calls a "climate and water crisis".

According to some political analysts, the wildfires will have a negative impact on the ruling AKP.

"The wildfires have made the crisis of the political power not being able to rule even more visible. The supporters of the government are refraining from taking responsibility and are trying to distort the facts, but it seems they will not be able to achieve this, this time," said Ruşen Çakır, the editor-in-chief of independent news site Medyascope.

Ayşe Karabat