Some 4,500 hectares of land burned in Marmaris wildfires

MUĞLA

Some 4,500 hectares of green lands have been turned to ashes by the wildfires that took five days of massive efforts in the Aegean province of Muğla’s Marmaris district before being put out completely.

The first wildfires in the country this summer started late on June 21 in the Börtübed neighborhood as an arsonist set fires in three locations inside the Calabrian pine forests.

Despite the rapid intervention via land and air, the fires spread quickly with the help of strong winds. Encircling the fires on June 23, all were put out late on June 25.

The cooling efforts started the following day with some 46 helicopters, including three from Qatar, and 15 aircraft, including one from Azerbaijan.

“Fire under control… The cooling process will continue,” Agriculture and Forestry Minister Vahit Kirişçi said.

The minister listed the massive efforts, saying, “Aviation vehicles flew some 1,069 hours and made 4,048 sorties in five days.”

Since March 1, the firefighting aircraft and helicopters have dropped more than 13 tons of water on burning lands.

“Here in Marmaris, just in five days, some 12.5 tons of water were dropped. This shows our importance to the Marmaris wildfires,” he stated.

“Officers have intervened in the fires in a world-standard effort,” Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, who is at the scene since the beginning of fires with Kirişçi.

The 34-year-old arsonist, Sacit Ayhan, was arrested on June 24 after admitting that he started the fires as he was furious with his family members over land issues.

“My family was going to give me some land. Then they refused. So I got angry and set fires with gasoline,” Ayhan said in his police testimony.

However, his father, Kadir Ayhan, refuted the claims.

Saying that he still can not believe what his son has done this, the father said: “We are a family earning our lives by the sea. I do not know why he said so. There was no quarrel on land. Besides, I do not have any land in Marmaris.”

The arsonist’s father apologized to all the citizens of the country for his son’s behavior.

A series of more than 200 wildfires reduced 1,700 square kilometers in Türkiye’s Mediterranean region to ash in the summer of 2021, killing nine people, including two firefighters.

In the worst-ever wildfire season, the fires started in the southern province of Antalya’s Manavgat district on July 28, 2021, and ended on Aug. 9, 2021, in Muğla.