‘It is not Antalya, it is Mount Cudi’

* Photo: Mezopotamya Agency (MA)

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

It is Şırnak, a Kurdish-majority province in southeast Turkey. Since early summer, sporadic forest fires have been razing different parts of the city, especially Cudi and Gabar mountains and an area called Besta.

While these fires are still burning in some parts of Şırnak, most recently, on August 28, the Cifanê (Cevizdüzü) village on the foothills of Mount Cudi was affected by one of these fires.

When we speak with Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Şırnak MP Hasan Özgüneş about the fires that break out in Turkey's Kurdish-majority provinces in almost every summer, he says that these fires are started on purpose.

According to Özgüneş, these fires target the citizens who have come back to their villages that were evicted by security forces in the 1990s. There is an attempt to make them migrate again, he says.

When Özgüneş tells us that no relevant institutions make efforts to fight these fires, we try to contact an official from the Şırnak Governor's Office; however, we cannot reach anyone. So, we call the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) Şırnak Municipality.

An anonymous municipality official says that their vehicles fail to reach the region as there are no roads and they sometimes cannot go there for security reasons. "We do not have anything to do with this," says the official.

Village guards cut down trees

HDP MP Özgüneş alleges that since the onset of the conflict period, security forces have been starting fires on the foothills of Mount Cudi, in Besta and several mountains in Uludere by opening fire with bullets or artillery.

He says that village guards are made to cut down trees in the region for "security" reasons. According to Özgüneş, when it is not possible to cut down trees, artillery fires come into play again for "security."

'The government's policy is to destroy people'

Özgüneş tells us how fires affect the region:

"There are mostly oakwoods in this region and oak trees do not grow that quickly. Fires harm the eco-structure, destroy animals' living space and several animals die in these fires.

"Eco-structure is harmed. As locals subsist on agriculture and animal breeding here, the economic space of these people is also shrunk by the fires. Government policy functions by destroying people here."

* HDP MP Hasan Özgüneş

Intervention against the ones intervening in fires

Özgüneş underlines that they brought this issue into Parliamentary agenda many times before and they tried to raise publicity and concerns via media outlets, but no relevant authority that they tried to reach has so far addressed their efforts and concerns:

"We tried to reach the Şırnak Governor's Office, we tried to contact the relevant officials, but they did not respond, they did not address us in any way at all. The municipality said that they did not have water or vehicles. The state authorities took no action to put out the fire, either.

"On the very contrary, even when people wanted to extinguish the fires by their own means or when our party intervened to put out the fires together with the people, these attempts were prevented by saying, 'We cannot ensure your security, it is not a safe area."

'All means are used when a fire breaks out in west'

"A definite result of what we see in practice," Özgüneş further comments on the fires and briefly adds the following:

"The aim itself is to burn down the forest, damage the environment, destroy living spaces, thereby depopulating the area and making this geography infertile. For instance, when such fires break out in the West, the state uses all of its means, neighboring countries are even asked for help if needs be.

"But any fire in the region is created by the state's security affairs; they do not intervene and prevent the ones who want to do so.

"They face no legal action, either. In fact, the laws foresee heavy sentences for those who commit crimes against forests and ecology, especially for the ones who start fires. But, when provincial security forces are concerned, laws do not work here, authorities do not take action."

Municipality official: It is not Antalya, it is Cudi

When we call the Şırnak Municipality to inquire about the allegations that fires are not intervened by the authorities, an anonymous official says that they do not know the cause of these fires, adding that they try to put out every fire as long as their vehicles can reach the area in question:

"We do not know why the fires break out. But the southeast is a hot region, people also picnic, etc. They might be caused by all that. But it has nothing to do with security forces. Let alone, security forces intervened in this fire.

"Mount Cudi is quite in the wilderness, there is no road for vehicles and, therefore, it is not possible to intervene in every area.

"We have intervened in all fires to the point where our vehicles can reach till today. But we cannot go there on a vehicle road. We also cannot go to some places in line with our security forces' warnings."

Lastly, we remind the official that when a fire breaks out in the West and vehicles cannot reach it on land, helicopters join the fire fighting efforts. The official answers: "It is not Çanakkale or Antalya, it is Mount Cudi. Even helicopters fly at a certain altitude here." (TP/SD)