At least eight people are dead as wildfires rip through southern coastal tourist resorts in drought-hit Turkey for the sixth day, as the country grapples with its worst fire crisis in a decade.
According to The Week, the dead include two in the town of Manavgat on Sunday, according to Health Minister Fahrettin Koca. Five other people in Manavgat and one person in Marmaris have also died in recent days.
On Monday Turkish authorities said more than 130 blazes that had erupted over the past week have been contained, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, and Azerbaijan have deployed teams to help Turkish firefighters and volunteers battle the blazes, and the European Union said Sunday it was mobilizing three fire-fighting planes to fight the fires on Turkey’s coast.
Seven fires are still burning along Turkey’s Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, fueled by strong winds, low humidity, and relentless heatwave temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104°F).
The damage from the wildfires and spread of the Delta variant is expected to hit Turkey’s tourism sector hard, but the damage extends much further. “The animals are on fire,” Muzeyyan Kacar, a 56-year-old farmer in the village of Kacarlar, told CNN. “Everything is going to burn. Our land, our animals, and our house.”
Even with all the help from neighboring countries, and 16 planes and 51 helicopters tackling the blazes, villagers carrying water containers up a hill to fight a fire near Marmaris told Reuters the government was not doing enough to help them.
“We are here as the entire village, from the locals to others. We didn’t run or anything, so the government must see this and also not run away. It must send some of its planes here,” a woman called Gulhan said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is being criticized for the shortage of firefighting aircraft in the country, reports the BBC, but Erdogan’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, has rejected that criticism, instead, condemning a social media campaign for calling for foreign help.
“Our Turkey is strong. Our state is standing tall,” Altun said on Twitter, describing most information about the fires on social media as “fake news”. “All our losses will be compensated for.”
Engin Ozkoc, a senior figure in the main opposition CHP, called on Forestry Minister Bekir Pakdemirli to resign for failing to adequately prepare.
“You don’t deserve that ministry. You didn’t foresee this and buy firefighting planes,” he said, criticizing the number of aerial resources available.
