Turkey battles to quell wildfires as residents and tourists flee
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Turkey has contained more than 100 wildfires after a series of blazes near its Mediterranean coastline killed six people and forced thousands of residents and foreign tourists to flee holiday resorts, the government said on Sunday.
Winds gusting at 50km per hour, low humidity and temperatures hovering near 40C have made controlling the fires difficult, Bekir Pakdemirli, the forestry minister, said on Twitter and in comments reported in state-run media.
The fires began on July 28, and the simultaneous start of so many conflagrations raised suspicions they may have been deliberately set, Pakdemirli said, although he did not offer evidence of arson.
About 100 Russian nationals were evacuated from the Bodrum peninsula in western Turkey on Saturday and moved to hotels elsewhere, the Russian consulate in the city of Antalya said in a statement, according Sputnik, a Russian state media outlet. Local tourists were also among the evacuees, with some forced to leave by sea as the blaze cut off other escape routes.
Flights from Russia, Turkey’s biggest source of tourists, only resumed in late June after Moscow suspended charter trips amid a record outbreak of Covid-19 cases in Turkey in the spring. Coronavirus-related travel restrictions to Turkey have hammered its tourism sector, which directly and indirectly accounts for about 13 per cent of gross domestic product.
The forestry ministry website showed at least 15 active fires on Sunday. Villagers and forestry workers were among the six people who died, according to Turkish media. Mehmet Oktay, mayor of the resort town of Marmaris, said one volunteer firefighter had died and another 100 people had been injured in a spate of fires that have scorched more than 10,000 hectares near the town.
A half-dozen fires continued to sear areas mostly inaccessible by road, and the number of blazes across Turkey meant not enough firefighting planes were available, he said. “It’s heartbreaking, and I am fighting back tears to concentrate on the emergency at hand. It will take more than a decade to restore this land,” he said.
Thousands of farm animals and untold numbers of wild animals also perished in the fires, which one meteorologist estimated reached 200C.
Wildfires are an annual occurrence in south-west Turkey’s pine forests, and one expert told CNN Turk television that 95 per cent are deliberately or accidentally sparked by people.
Yet the scale of the current conflagration is remarkable, and some are blaming climate change for the disaster. Turkey recorded its highest ever temperature in a south-eastern town last month, and much of the country has been gripped by drought this year, while deadly floods struck north-east Turkey last month.
Several other Mediterranean countries are battling blazes this summer, including Cyprus, Greece, Lebanon and Italy, and scientists have said the extreme weather events across the globe this summer may be the result of global warming.