Kurdish villagers in southeast Turkey who recall the systematic burning of their villages by the Turkish state in the 1990s, which led to the migration of millions of Kurds to Turkish cities, now fear a new wave of migration due to the consequences of the recent wildfires between Diyarbakır (Amed) and Mardin (Mêrdîn).
On 20 June, a devastating fire swept through rural communities spanning Mardin’s Mazıdağı (Şemrex) and Diyarbakır’s Çınar (Xana Axpar) districts, claiming 15 lives and injuring at least 78 others. The blaze engulfed large areas between the two districts, leaving behind widespread devastation and prompting an outcry from affected Kurdish residents.
The villagers living in houses near the starting point of the fire insist that sparks from electricity poles caused the fire. They refute the claims of Dicle Electricity Distribution Company (DEDAŞ) that the fire was caused by stubble, arguing that the wheat had not yet been harvested, making it impossible for stubble to have caused the fire. A report by the Diyarbakır Chief Prosecutor supports the villagers’ claims, confirming that the fire, which destroyed 1,490 hectares of land, was caused by electrical faults rather than stubble burning by villagers.
The inhabitants of the affected villages highlighted that a large part of the population was forced to migrate to the Turkish cities in the 1990s when the Turkish state burnt down thousands of Kurdish villages as part of its “scorched earth” policy. In an interview with Voice of America Turkish, villagers stated that a ‘failure to compensate for the damages caused by the fire could lead to a new wave of migration.’
İbrahim Eren, one of the villagers who saw the start of the fires on 20 June, supported these concerns about migrating again if the damages are not compensated. “After the end of the events in the 90s, we returned to our own village and land. […] We had just started to stand on our feet. Then we were exposed to this disaster,” he said.
Eren added that DEDAŞ had filed a criminal complaint against him following a video in which he stated the cause of the fire was “the failure to renew 40-year-old electrical wiring and infrastructure”.
Commenting on the extent of the damage caused by the fire, he said that his family’s seven hectares of wheat crops were burnt down, alongside a thousand root grape trees, 500 fruit trees, and that “more than a thousand animals have been lost, [which means that] more than half of the livestock of this village is gone.”
