‘Turkey’s Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry destroys the ecosystem in Marmaris’

* Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA) - File

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The Marmaris City Council and the Muğla Environment Platform (MUÇEP) Marmaris Assembly made a statement in the sapling planting area in İçmeler and talked about the failure to take steps after the region had faced wide-scale damage in the wildfires in summer 2021.

Reading out the press statement on behalf of the group, Cem Selik, a member of the Marmaris City Council, recalled that the fire that broke out in the district on July 29, 2021 destroyed forests on a 13,650-hectare area and innumerable living beings inhabiting in those forests.

Selik said that the efforts made in the area after the fires prevented nature from recovering and healing itself: "The efforts are far from an ecology-based view. It was enough to ensure that nature, striving to bring itself into being, was not faced with the human obstacle."

Nature and life defenders announced that they will submit a petition to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and called for an end to the works.

'Ministry did what fires could not'

Selik said that the ministry caused the destruction of the ecosystem, which fires could not manage to do in Marmaris, reiterating that the activities led by the Forestry Operation Directorates should be stopped.

He called on the authorities to ensure that the reorganization of forests is undertaken transparently with the participation of scientists and local people. "When we look at the razed areas, we see a future that will blossom while your ministry sees timbers to be cashed in," he said.

"As both the inhabitants of Marmaris and citizens who embrace it as their principle to defend the right to nature, we do not accept that the Ministry carries out the post-fire activities with a mentality of a business owner and through a profitability-cost equation," added Selik further.

There was a project plan in İçmeler

According to the news reported in the press in September 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry gave a decision of "No Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is necessary" for the construction of a 205-room hotel and 1,407 immovables purchased on a time share basis (dwellings) by the Sinpaş Real Estate Investment company in the Kızılkum area of İçmeler Neighborhood in Marmaris. The related decision was reportedly given on August 13 and the project foresaw the construction of the related immovable property on a 163,968-square meter area.

The Marmaris City Council announced that the area where the project was to be constructed was the starting point of the Marmaris fires, the most damaging Muğla fires that razed the city in summer 2021.

About wildfires in Turkey

The year 2021 has been marked by major forest fires in Turkey. The forest fires that broke out in Antalya's Manavgat in the Mediterranean region on July 28, 2021 spread in the Mediterranean, Aegean, Marmara, Western Black Sea and Southeast Anatolian regions.

As of August 12, 2021, 299 forest fires had erupted in 49 of the 81 provinces in Turkey. Eight people lost their lives in fires. No data has been published as to the number of deceased animals.

As the three fire-fighting planes rented from Russia fell short of putting out the fires, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Russia, Spain, Croatia, Qatar and Iran offered personnel and vehicle support to Turkey.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry did not use the planes of the Turkish Aeronautical Association (THK), which sparked criticism.

As fires spread to residential areas, hundreds of villages and towns were evacuated, thousands were taken to somewhere safe by land and sea.

Only in Manavgat, 56,663 hectares of land were razed while this number was 12,935 in Marmaris, 11,898 in Bodrum, 1,629 in Köyceğiz and 685 in Gündoğmuş, which accounted for 83,810 hectares in total.

These fires razed an area larger than 15 percent of İstanbul's territory and the size of 118 thousand football fields.

According to the data of Turkey's Directorate General of Forestry, 68,579 fires broke out in Turkey in 1988-2019 and they razed an area of 336,824 hectares, which means that an average of 2,143 fires broke out and 10,526 hectares of land were burned every year. (TP/SD)