Forested areas in Turkey have once more been handed over to sectors such as mining, energy and tourism due to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government’s neo-liberal policies of the last few years, said Green Left Party member Çiğdem Özbaş, talking to the Yeni Yaşam newspaper. Özbaş is also part of the party’s working team within Turkey’s Climate Justice Coalition.
In western Turkey forests are destroyed for the construction of infrastructure, while in the Kurdish-majority east and southeast of the country, they are either burnt or chopped down to enable military operations. Between 2015 and 2020 alone, the equivalent of 11,000 football fields of forest were burnt to the ground. Luxury hotels have risen up in some of the areas burnt or otherwise destroyed after various permissions were granted.
“When it comes to Kurdistan, deforestation always comes together with arguments about security. They’re cutting down trees to build a military fortress.” Özbaş said, noting that the Green Left Party continues to struggle against ecological destruction wrought by the Turkish government and capitalist groups in the country.
She went on to remark that in other regions of Turkey the AKP and the capitalist groups treat forests as sources of easy money. “If you create new forests for industrial purposes and centred on development, or if you cut down old trees and plant fast-growing trees instead, the ancient forest ecology will disappear. Logs and timber from trees planted in the forests are used in the transportation, housing and construction sectors.”
Özbaş said that a serious rift had opened up in in the ecosystem due to the government’s environmental policies, and that forest areas needed to be restored and expanded to alleviate this situation. She also stressed the need to increase the prevalence of carbon sink tree species to improve biodiversity.