Turkish Army Burns Down Forests in Kurdistan – Call for an International Delegation!

With the restart of the war in North-Kur­dis­tan by Turk­ish state in end of July 2015 the Turk­ish Army has start­ed to burn down forests.

With the restart of the war in North-Kur­dis­tan by Turk­ish state in end of July 2015 the Turk­ish Army has start­ed to burn down forests. After 2,5 years of nego­ti­a­tions about the start of a peace process between the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment and the Kur­dish Free­dom Move­ment, the Turk­ish side decid­ed to attack the PKK Guer­ril­la HPG (Peo­ples Defense Forces) and legal polit­i­cal activists.

In a planned and sys­tem­at­ic man­ner the Turk­ish Army shoots with muni­tion and bombs which result in for­est fires. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in the provinces of Der­sim (Tunceli), Sirnex (Şır­nak) and Amed (Diyarbakır) the Army has burned down sev­er­al eco­log­i­cal­ly high­ly sen­si­tive forests in its oper­a­tions against the HPG. There­by the Turk­ish Army hopes to lim­it the mobil­i­ty of HPG. This method in fight­ing the long-last­ing Kur­dish rebel­lion has been used wide­ly already in the 90’s in North-Kur­dis­tan. Almost every greater for­est in the con­test­ed regions has been burned down in that years.

The most for­est fires have been ini­ti­at­ed in areas which have been declared by the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment as “secu­ri­ty areas” just after the restart of the war. That is why local peo­ple and activists – like from our move­ment – have been hin­dered by the Turk­ish Army to go to the affect­ed areas and try to extin­guish the fires. These ini­tia­tives have been cre­at­ed while the respon­si­ble gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies did not act. We assume that they have been instruct­ed by the gov­ern­ment not to inter­vene. To date sev­er­al hun­dred hectares of forests have been burnt down in North-Kur­dis­tan where the main tree type is the oak.

We call on the inter­na­tion­al polit­i­cal activists, social move­ments and NGO’s work­ing on eco­log­i­cal issues to join an inter­na­tion­al del­e­ga­tion. This del­e­ga­tion could inves­ti­gate the dimen­sion and impacts of the for­est fires of the last weeks, the sub­se­quent behav­ior of Turk­ish offi­cials, the efforts of locals to extin­guish the fires and if exist­ing the ongo­ing fires and inform the inter­na­tion­al pub­lic based on their obser­va­tions. We think that the extreme­ly destruc­tive behav­ior of the Turk­ish State in this dirty war must be treat­ed also on inter­na­tion­al lev­el. The peri­od for the inter­na­tion­al del­e­ga­tion is planned from the 8th to the 12th Sep­tem­ber 2015. Write us in case of inter­est.

Ercan Aybo­ga
for the Mesopotami­an Ecol­o­gy Move­ment

Con­tact:
email: e.ayboga@gmx.net
fb: www.facebook.com/mezopotamyaekolojihareketi

Sources about the fires:
Al-Mon­i­tor, 21.07.2015: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/07/turkey-kurds-pkk-forest-fires-cause-political-mayhem.html
Firat News Agency, 05.08.2015: http://en.firatajans.com/kurdistan/forest-fires-caused-by-turkish-army-expand
Kur­dish Dai­ly News, 09.08.2015: http://kurdishdailynews.org/2015/08/09/forest-fires-caused-by-turkish-airstrikes-in-zap-and-xakurke/