Updates: polution; hunting; animal slaughter; climate change

[Anthea]

Istanbul: brutal killing of stray cat

An animal rights group announces that it would be appealing the culprit's early release, citing that he should be jailed for four years not one as stated by law

The streets of Istanbul are being flooded with protests and petitions urging the Turkish President to take more measures to retry the criminal who killed a stray cat.

Back in January, Ibrahim Keloglan was caught on security camera footage in his residential building kicking a stray cat named Eros to death.

Last month, the culprit was sentenced to 18 months in jail but was released on good behavior, sparking an uproar among animal welfare groups and the public.

An online petition was signed by around 320,000 people who demanded a stricter sentence as the justice ministry last month claimed Ibrahim Keloglan would be retried following a night-time call from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying he was taking "personal" interest in the matter.

Even though the judges increased his sentence by a year, he was not detained.

One animal rights group announced that it would be appealing, citing that he should be jailed for four years stated by law.

During the trial, it came to light that Keloglan attacked and killed the cat for about five minutes, despite its attempts to escape.

The hashtag #JusticeforEros (#ErosicinAdalet) is trending on social media platform X, while in Turkey several major newspapers, such as Hurriyet, display pictures of the dead cat on their front pages.

Hurriyet posted several articles about Eros and "Ibrahim the killer", while many celebrities joined the Justice for Eros appeal, such as Argentinian footballer Mauro Icardi of the reigning Turkish Galatasaray team.

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/mis ... ling-of-st

[Anthea]

Peshmerga Protect Nature in Kurdistan

Besides ensuring the security of the Kurdistan Region, the Peshmerga forces have taken on the responsibility of protecting nature, birds, and animals as part of their national duties.

The Peshmergas of the second battalion of the 14th Brigade of the Region’s Peshmerga Ministry have built several water wells in Mount Qarachogh, a critical move in a region where water scarcity is a significant concern.

The Civil Defense of Kurdistan has issued guidelines emphasizing the importance of providing water for birds and animals to help preserve the Region's diverse nature. These measures ensure the well-being of wildlife in arid areas like Mount Qarachogh. The guidelines include recommendations for safeguarding human health, homes, and vehicles, alongside measures for environmental conservation.

Water is essential for the survival of wild animals in arid regions. By constructing these water wells, the Peshmerga forces ensure that birds and animals have access to this vital resource, supporting their well-being and contributing to the preservation of the diverse nature found in Kurdistan.

This initiative highlights the multifaceted role of the Peshmerga, extending beyond defense to encompass environmental stewardship.

https://www.basnews.com/en/babat/852021

[Anthea]

Iraq poisons hundreds of stray dogs

Authorities have killed at least 600 stray dogs in Iraq's southern city of Nasiriyah, following an uptick in dog attacks against children

Dr. Mohammed Aziz al-Mayahi, director of Dhi Qar’s provincial veterinary department told Rudaw on Sunday the decision to poison the dogs came after an emergency meeting at the provincial level following 11 children being attacked by stray dogs.

He added that there are a growing number of dogs in the provincial capital of Nasiriyah. The strays pose a “serious threat” to residents through spreading diseases, according to Mayahi.

“After the emergency meeting held in Dhi Qar province which included the relevant departments, the meeting decided to purchase poison to destroy the dogs. The campaign has been underway for a week and is continuing,” Mayahi added.

So far 600 dogs have been “destroyed,” according to Mayahi.

He said the options consisted of killing the dogs by weapon or poison to clear them from the urban areas or to open a dog shelter; however, he said that opening a shelter was not practical at this stage.

Col. Maytham al-Mishrefawy, the spokesperson for the police department in Dhi Qar, confirmed to Rudaw that their forces are responsible for euthanizing the canines.

“Some 285 dogs were poisoned in one single day,” Mushrafawi said.

The provincial governor has formed a task force comprised of different departments, including veterinary and the police, to carry out a poisoning campaign.

Dhi Qar province also is dealing with an outbreak of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. The disease can be spread through ticks which live on dogs.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/240620243

[Anthea]

Residents queue for clean water

Residents of Darbandikhan town in Sulaimani province still queue to obtain clean water despite the presence of a large dam

Farman Abdulrahman, a resident of Darbandikhan, collects empty cans every two days and visits the well to fetch safe drinking water.

“People in Darbandikhan have struggled to get clean drinking water for over 20 years. You have to plan then come and queue here for more than a few hours until you get a few cans of clean drinking water,” Abdulrahman told Rudaw on Tuesday.

In 2013, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) decided to build a water treatment plant to address the drinking water problem in Darbandikhan town.

The plant was supposed to be completed within a year, but it has yet to be finished.

“The company has resumed operations, but all that remains is to receive their financial entitlements in the next couple of weeks and start ordering and bringing in materials,” said Bakhtiar Tahir, director of water resources of the towns around Sulaimani.

The Darbandikhan dam is the primary water source for the residents. However, the residents claim that sewage contamination from Sulaimani and Sharazur makes this water unsuitable for drinking or bathing.

The Darbandikhan dam, inaugurated in 1961 on the Sirwan River, supplies electricity to several cities and regulates water supplies to vast farmlands in Garmiyan and central Iraq. The dam has a capacity of three billion cubic meters of water.

The dam was last full in 2019, but would later experience years of drought due to lack of rainfall, exacerbated by the dams built on upstream rivers in Iran.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/27062024

[Anthea]

Fire in Nusaybin countryside threatens 14 villages

Fires from electricity poles continue in Northern Kurdistan. A fire broke out in the village of Serêkaniyê (Pınarbaşı) in Nusaybin district of Mardin this morning and spread to two other villages

The fire, which could not be brought under control despite the intervention of fire brigades and villagers, threatens a large area including 14 villages.

Nusaybin Co-Mayor Gülbin Şahin Dağhan made a statement to the press and public regarding the latest situation with the fire.

Dağhan emphasised that although they informed the relevant units, they did not receive any serious feedback and underlined that if the fire spread to the mountainous area where it is impossible to reach by fire brigade and human intervention, a great disaster would occur.

The co-mayor stated the following:

"There is currently a fire in the forest area in the villages of Çalı, Pınarbaşı and Eskimağara in Nusaybin. We received information that the fire started from electric wires. We rushed to the scene and intervened on the spot. We tried to contact the district governor. We called the relevant units and AFAD (disaster unit). But since it was the morning hours, no one answered the phone.

Our fire brigade teams intervened early, but since it is a mountainous region, they could not intervene in the upper parts. They could only intervene in the area close to the road. There are blowing vehicles for fire intervention in rural areas. Some of these were used by the fire brigade and some by the villagers. Efforts are being made to bring the fire under control in this way. However, the fire still continues. At the moment, it is not possible to control the fire with the fire brigade and manpower in terms of physical facilities. We demand that a helicopter be sent urgently."

[Anthea]

Village guards cut down trees

Village guards are cutting down trees in the area of Komate in Beytüşşebap

Village guards cutting trees in the region of Komate in Beytüşşebap (Elkê) in Şirnak(Şirnex) are destroying forest areas under the supervision of soldiers. Thousands of trees cut down in the mountainous area were collected by tractors on the slopes of the military towers on the sides of the road. The trees are loaded onto trucks and trucks on the Beytüşşebap-Uludere (Elkê-Qileban) road and taken to different cities.

It was stated that the soldiers had previously instructed the villagers in the Komate region to "cut down the trees", but the villagers refused, so the village guards cut them down themselves

[Anthea]

Huge nationwide blazes

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has denied having a hand in Erbil, Duhok and Kirkuk’s recent fires after the Kurdistan Region’s interior ministry official previously had said on Monday that two people affiliated with the party had been arrested for arson

“We are preparing for coordination and holding elections, rather than starting a civil war,” PUK spokesperson Saadi Ahmed Pira told reporters Monday, denying his party’s involvement in the arsons.

The PUK spokesperson further said that the second person possibly could have been a member of his party previously, but he was not when he committed the alleged crime.

Mirany had said two of the three suspects arrested during their joint investigation with the Iraqi interior ministry were affiliated with the PUK, with one being a member of the party-linked Counter-Terrorism Group (CTG) and the other a member of the PUK. He claimed that they had been “trained” by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on how to commit the crimes.

Pira charged that Mirany, a member of the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), was targeting the PUK as part of the election campaign.

“The sponsoring and executing party of this topic is the PKK, which is a banned organization,” Miqdad Miri, spokesperson for Iraq’s interior ministry, had said. He did not name the PUK.

“Their purpose in this matter was to hit the commercial interests of one of the countries they are opposing directly,” Miri added, likely referring to Turkey, and to “impact the economy and security situation in the provinces of the [Kurdistan] Region directly, and create a state of discontent among the people in the provinces.”

The fires incurred around $300 million in material damage, according to Miri.

The PKK, an outlawed party in Iraq, has denied it was behind the blazes, calling on Baghdad to reveal the “real perpetrators.”

In April, Erbil Governor Omed Khoshnaw said that authorities had suspected arson after the city’s famous Langa bazaar caught fire twice in less than two months. Also in April, a massive fire swept through central Duhok’s Chale bazaar, burning more than 300 shops.

A month later, shopkeepers in Kirkuk’s Ottoman-era Qaysari bazaar said they were suspicious about the source of the fire because it broke out in different areas of the bazaar at the same time.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/02072024

Do I personally believe the PUK?

NO not since Bafel Jalal Talabani ILLEGALLY threw out his cousin (the legal join leader of PUK) and took complete control of PUK for himself

I believe Bafel Jalal Talabani belongs in prison along with his crooked friends

[Anthea]

Thursday public holiday as temp soar

Iraq’s meteorology and seismology organization announced that temperatures are set to reach 50 degrees Celsius, prompting a public holiday on Thursday in several provinces

“Temperatures will reach above 50 degrees Celsius in central and southern provinces,” Amir Jabri, spokesperson for Iraq’s meteorology department, told Rudaw on Wednesday.

Jabri highlighted the onset of the year's second heatwave, expected to persist for a few days and cautioned against direct exposure to sunlight.

Thursday is a workday in Iraq; however, public offices and most businesses are closed on Friday and Saturday.

According to the organization’s forecasts, eight provinces will experience temperatures of at least 50 degrees Celsius.

During last month’s heatwave, Iraq’s health ministry issued instructions to citizens, advising against going outside and being exposed to direct sunlight, especially from 10 am to 4 pm.

Extreme summer temperatures were recorded across the globe last year, particularly in Iraq, which is the fifth-most vulnerable country to the effects of climate change.

Scorching temperatures are not new in Iraq, particularly in the south where temperatures regularly approach 50 degrees Celsius, coupled with water scarcity, desertification, and reduced rainfall.

However, a lack of access to basic services, such as water and electricity, makes it more difficult for people to cope with the heat.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/100720241

[Anthea]

Japan to shoot more bears

Facing an alarming rise in bear attacks, Japan wants to make it easier to shoot the animals in residential areas - but hunters say it is too risky

In the year to April, there were a record 219 bear attacks in the country - six of them fatal, according to official data.

Deadly attacks have continued to occur in recent months, as bears increasingly venture into populated areas. Some are now even thought to see humans as prey.

Bear numbers have revived as Japan's human population ages and shrinks, especially outside cities. The consequences have been dangerous, although usually resulting in injury not death.

Under the current law, licensed hunters can fire their guns only after the approval of a police officer.

The government plans to revise the law at its next parliamentary session so the weapons can be used more freely. For instance, hunters will be allowed to shoot if there is a risk of human injury, such as when a bear enters a building.

Solution: shut the doors

But hunters are wary. "It is scary and quite dangerous to encounter a bear. It is never guaranteed that we can kill a bear by shooting," said Satoshi Saito, executive director of the Hokkaido Hunters' Association.

"If we miss the vital point to stop the bear from moving... it will run away and may attack other people," he added. "If it then attacks a person, who will be responsible for that?"

Hokkaido has come to exemplify Japan's growing bear problem.

The country's northernmost major island is sparsely populated - but its bear population has more than doubled since 1990, according to government data. It now has around 12,000 brown bears, which are known to be more aggressive than black bears, of which there are around 10,000 in Japan by experts' estimates.

Local governments have tried different strategies to keep bears away.

Some have turned to odd guardians - robot wolves, complete with red eyes and spooky howls, while elsewhere in the country they are testing an artificial intelligence warning system, external.

The town of Naie in Hokkaido has been trying to hire hunters for 10,300 yen ($64; £50) a day to patrol the streets, lay traps and kill the animals if necessary.

But there are few takers - it's a high-risk job, the pay is not attractive enough and many of the hunters are elderly.

"It is not worth the trouble because confronting a bear will put our lives on the line," a 72-year-old hunter from the area told The Asahi Shimbun newspaper, likening an encounter with a brown bear to "fighting a US military commando".

In May, two police officers in northern Akita prefecture were seriously injured by a bear while trying to retrieve a body from the woods after a suspected fatal bear attack.

"The bears know humans are present and attack people for their food, or recognise people themselves as food," local government official Mami Kondo said.

"There is a high risk that the same bear will cause a series of incidents."

As bear numbers have grown, more of them have moved from the mountains into flatlands closer to human populations. Over time, they have become used to the sights and sounds of humans, and less afraid of them.

There are also fewer humans around as young people move to big cities, leaving whole towns nearly empty. When bears do encounter humans, it can turn violent.

"Bears that enter urban areas tend to panic, increasing the risk of injury or death to people," said Junpei Tanaka from the Picchio Wildlife Research Center in Japan.

Bear sightings and incidents usually happen around April when they awake from hibernation in search of food, and then again in September and October when they eat to store fat for the winter months.

But their movements have become more unpredictable as yields of acorn - the biggest food source for bears - fall because of climate change.

"This amendment to the law is unavoidable, but it is only a stopgap measure in an emergency," Mr Tanaka said.

Capturing and killing the animals is not the way forward, he adds. Rather, the government needs to protect the bears' habitat so they are not compelled to venture too far

"In the long-term, it is necessary to implement national policy to change the forest environment, to create forests with high biodiversity."

He added that the government also needs to clarify who should take responsibility for bears that wander into residential zones - local officials or hunters.

"Ideally, there should be fully trained shooters like government hunters who respond to emergencies, but at present there are no such jobs in Japan."

Residential areas are a vastly different terrain for hunters, who are used to killing bears in unpopulated regions, Mr Saito said.

"If we don't shoot, people will criticise us and say 'Why didn't you shoot when you have a shotgun?' And if we shoot, I am sure people will be angry and say it might hit someone.

"I think it is unreasonable to ask hunters who are probably just ordinary salarymen to make such a decision."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c19kvevezlwo

Bears killed 6 people, how many bears have been killed?

[Anthea]

Polar bear trackers

New tech aims to keep polar bears and people apart

As the climate warms, polar bears are seen on land earlier in the season

At the end of the Canadian Arctic summer, polar bears head inland to wait for the ice to form.

And while thousands of tourists flock to catch a glimpse of these magnificent predators, researchers are developing novel ways to keep people and bears safely separated

New tracking devices that stick in polar bears’ fur could be the key to protecting both people and bears - by closely monitoring the animals' locations.

Polar bears now spend more of the year on land, as Arctic sea ice melts, so conservationists are increasingly concerned about bears and people coming into contact.

The tracking tags, which have been tested on bears in Canadian Arctic, could help prevent those encounters, by “keeping a remote eye” on the bears.

The fur tags relay a bear’s position and allow scientists to study behaviour

Lead researcher Tyler Ross, a PhD candidate from York University in Toronto, said the fur tags were “particularly promising” for the prevention of these “human-bear interactions”.

In communities in the southern Canadian Arctic, where the scientists tested these tags, polar bears that wander too close to a community are sometimes caught, transported and released in carefully selected sites away from towns and villages.

“These tags could be fitted to those bears to monitor where they are after they've been released,” explained Mr Ross.

“If they're coming back towards the community, conservation staff would have a sense of where they are, and they could head them off. I think that's where they offer considerable promise."

The researcher, who studies polar bear ecology, also says the tags could fill important gaps in knowledge about the bears. And as the Arctic climate warms up rapidly, the need to monitor bears becomes increasingly urgent.

The new tracker tags attach to the bears' fur and, while the animals are sedated to fit the tags, the devices fall off naturally

“There's a dearth of information about male polar bear movements, because they can't be equipped with conventional tracking collars,” said Mr Ross.

The sea ice [that the polar bears use as a platform from which to hunt] is disappearing faster than it has in the past,” explained Mr Ross. “So the winter hunting season is getting shorter. We want to know where they're moving in response.”

Polar bears are difficult to tag. Male bears’ heads are smaller than their necks, so tracking collars can just slip off.

Another option is ear tags - attached by piercing the bear’s ear. They require an animal to be recaptured in order to remove the tag and, in rare cases, can injure the ear.

The three new tags the researchers tested were designed by the company 3M in collaboration with the charity Polar Bears International. They all attach to the bears’ coarse fur.

To fit the tags, scientists had to locate and sedate bears. They then assessed the quality of the data they received from each device and noted when the tags fell off.

The best performing tag remained attached to the bear for an average of 58 days

The best performing device was called a SeaTrkr tag, which is “crimped” into the bears’ fur. It stayed attached for an average of 58 days and - with an in-built GPS system - allowed the scientists to pinpoint the bears’ location to within just a few metres.

“It’s ideal to have something that falls off naturally - that’s not permanently attached to the bear,” explained Mr Ross. “But anything that lasts in the order of a few months would be great [for our research], because then you’re getting these important seasons that the bears are going through throughout the year.”

Climate change is bringing bears and humans into closer proximity, making places where polar bears and people coexist, riskier for both.

One US Geological Survey study in 2022 that that used data from satellite tracking collars on more than 400 polar bears in Alaska, shows the time they spend onshore has grown significantly in recent decades.

“Getting a better sense of polar bears’ movements is really crucial,” Mr Ross commented. “Particularly given the state of their environment at this point.”

This study of the bear tags is published in the journal Animal Biotelemetry.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cljy48yj99wo

[Anthea]

Significant improvement in water supplies

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – In an interview with Kurdistan24, Karash stated, "The governor will soon announce good news regarding the water shortage issue in Erbil neighborhoods. We have two projects slated for implementation next week to address this."

Masoud Karash, Deputy Governor of Erbil, announced that the addition of Ifraz-3 water to the city’s distribution network next week is expected to resolve 75% of Erbil’s water shortage problems.

He explained that the increased water supply from Ifraz-3 will reach up to 48,000 cubic meters. Additionally, two new engines will be installed to facilitate the distribution of water from Ifraz to the network, which is anticipated to solve 75% of the city's water shortage issues.

However, Karash emphasized that completely eradicating the water shortage in Erbil requires a substantial budget, much larger than what is currently available. "The cost of the Erbil water project was $220 million. Thus, the governor's recent visit to Saudi Arabia focused on raising funds for projects amounting to approximately $700 million," he said.

Regarding development projects in Erbil, Karash highlighted that over 300 projects have been implemented, many on the province’s monthly advance. Despite financial challenges, the Kurdistan Regional Government resumed development projects with an initial budget of 28 billion dinars, which later increased to 150 billion dinars. However, due to the financial crisis in 2023, not all projects could be executed, though critical projects like the Banaslawa juxtaposition and Khabat road's second phase have commenced.

Karash noted, "Other types of service projects in Erbil, including those in water supply, education, health, and roads, have been implemented using the provincial budget."

Before 2014, Baghdad allocated budgets for the provinces, but following the budget cuts to the Kurdistan Region, Erbil has had to rely on private funds to address service gaps.

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/35 ... w-projects

[Anthea]

Desertification Threatens Iraq

Desertification poses a serious threat to Iraq's environment, while authorities are somewhat reluctant to address it. A lawmaker has warned that Iraq has lost 40 percent of its green belts in the past 20 years, threatening 93 percent of the country's territory

Muzir Mi'an, a member of the Iraqi parliament, stated, "Iraq has lost 40 percent of its green belts in the past 20 years. Ninety-three percent of the country's territory is threatened by desertification and the expansion of sand dunes."

"Environmental changes in Iraq in recent years are alarming," he continued. "Recent studies have shown that the detrimental effects of this phenomenon include water scarcity and the spread of desertification." High levels of dew drops have been reported in six provinces.

"The environment is a critical part of national security, and if serious steps are not taken, we will regret it in a few years," Mi'an emphasized, urging the revival of green spaces.

According to the Iraqi MP, since 2003, more than 40 percent of the green belts have been lost due to agricultural land conversion to residential areas, desertification, war, and the expansion of sand dunes.

Out of Iraq's more than 130 million acres of land, 95 million acres are affected by desertification, and another 27 million acres are at risk. The problem covers an area of 12 million acres, with over 200,000 acres annually losing their agricultural potential due to desertification.

According to a UN report, Iraq has been named the fifth-most vulnerable country to climate breakdown, facing challenges such as soaring temperatures, insufficient and declining rainfall, intensified droughts, water scarcity, frequent sand and dust storms, and flooding.

https://www.basnews.com/en/babat/854833

[Anthea]

Erbil Produces 800,000 Trees and Flowers

The Ministry of Municipalities and Tourism of Kurdistan (KRG) announced that approximately 800,000 trees and flowers have been produced in the nurseries of Erbil

In a statement released on Tuesday, the ministry highlighted efforts to enhance domestic production and reduce costs, thereby increasing greenery in the city. "During the ninth cabinet, more than 423,400 flowers and 361,048 trees were produced and planted in different parts of Erbil, raising the city's greenery rate to 20%," the statement said.

Statistics from the Erbil Parks Engineering Directorate detail the number of trees and flowers planted over the past five years. From 2019 to June 2024, a total of 784,448 trees and flowers were cultivated in the municipality's nurseries and subsequently planted by the Parks Engineering Directorate and Erbil Municipality teams.

Annual Breakdown of Plantings:

- 2019:
- Trees: 60,000
- Flowers: 80,000
- 2020:
- Trees: 93,200
- Flowers: 75,100
- Area: 316,625 m² of new grounds, shrubbery, islands, and fences.
- 2021:
- Trees: 70,000
- Flowers: 80,000
- Area: 90,930 m² of new grounds, shrubs, islands, and fences.
- Notable Project: Greenery of 120 meters street in Erbil.
- 2022:
- Trees: 90,100
- Flowers: 34,300
- 2023 (January to September):
- Trees: 78,100
- Flowers: 35,648

The concerted efforts of the KRG and the Erbil Municipality have significantly contributed to the city's environmental improvement, reflecting a commitment to sustainable urban development and enhanced public spaces.

https://www.basnews.com/en/babat/855197

[Anthea]

Weaponizing Wildfires:
Deforestation as Dekurdification
By Thoreau Redcrow, The Kurdish Center for Studies

Burning down forests so you can build castles upon the ashes sounds like an ancient moral parable about the pitfalls of rapaciousness, not a modern occupation strategy by the second largest military in NATO

The recent massive wildfires that ravaged Northern Kurdistan / Bakur (southeast Turkey) between Amed and Mêrdîn killed 15 people and left 78 injured. Beyond the human toll, over 1,000 sheep and goats were also burned to death, with 200 more being treated for severe burns. With temperatures above 40 °C (104 °F) in the preceding weeks, shrubs were tinder-dry, creating ideal conditions for the raging inferno to scorch nearly 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of farmland, residential areas, and forests.

However, while on the surface these fires appear to be “acts of nature” (or God, for believers), a look at the history of Turkey’s military occupation of Kurdish areas and the structural ways the Turkish state systematically aims to drive Kurds away from their ancestral lands, shows that such fires are often one of the most effective weapons at Ankara’s disposal

The ways that Turkey deploys supposed “wildfires” against the Kurds are emblematic of the wider ways that the 20+ million Kurds in Bakur face subjugation under a state that does not view them as befallen fellow citizens who require assistance, but as a disloyal un-Turkish nuisance who deserves cruelty. In this calculation,

Turkey sees every ‘natural’ tragedy (earthquake, wildfire, flood, landslide, drought, etc.) in Kurdish areas as a potential opportunity to harness Mother Nature as an ideal weapon, since it gives them plausible deniability. In these cases, it is not the Turkish military who literally murders Kurdish civilians—as they often have with their notorious JİTEM death squads—but an imperceptible force which Ankara can claim is beyond their control.

Yet, when one digs deeper on nearly all of these natural tragedies, you see a Turkish state that either directly caused the disaster, crafted the conditions for it to occur in the first place, or neglected to come to the aid of Kurds once it began—thereby maximizing the damage. For example, the latter case is evident when looking back on the large earthquakes which struck the Kurdish majority areas around Licê (1975), Çewlik (2003), and Wan (2011), killing 2,300, 177, and 600 people (mostly Kurds), respectively. In fact, during those instances, Turkey preferred to send Turkish soldiers to repress the anger over there being no government aid, rather than the aid itself.

And like with earthquakes, when it comes to forest fires, such tragedies should not be viewed as unfortunate calamities, but rather manufactured and weaponized anti-Kurdish ‘pogroms’, concealed in the cloak of a natural disaster. As a result, understanding the ways this dehumanizing social engineering process typically occurs is instructive for understanding what it means to be an occupied Kurd within Turkey.

Following the destruction of over 2,000 homes in Şirnex by the Turkish military in 2016 (as discussed in a recent KCS article), the surrounding hills were deforested, and new housing was built for Kurds by construction companies with ties to Erdoğan’s regime. The result are lifeless, repetitive barrack-style apartments, which resemble an inverted panopticon prison complex more than a neighborhood. When looking at such images amid the barren landscape, I am reminded of the Roman historian Tacitus’ famous passage: “They make a desolation and call it ‘peace.’”

Culpability for the Latest Inferno

The technical cause for the recent fires were faulty electricity poles and cables that were improperly maintained by the private Turkish electric company DEDAŞ. The company is notorious for neglecting Kurdish areas and price-gouging Kurds without any accountability. In the most recent incident, the company also quickly replaced all the poles the day after the fire to conceal any evidence of their culpability. But while the conditions for the fire were aided by negligence, the human tragedy of the fires was exacerbated by abandonment, due to the Turkish state refusing to provide assistance to curtail the fires once they began.

Melis Tantan, Kurdish spokeswoman for the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party’s Ecology and Agriculture Commission, denounced Ankara’s delayed response to the fire, declaring:

“It is not acceptable that a night vision helicopter was not sent to the region from the moment the fire started. The fire spread to a large area in a short time. And unfortunately, the calls were silenced. In such cases, early intervention from the air can prevent the fire from spreading to large areas. Unfortunately, our country is constantly caught unprepared for such disasters. This is not a coincidence or fate. This is a case of those responsible not fulfilling their responsibilities.”

As anger amongst Kurds grew towards Erdoğan’s spiteful regime for not assisting with the fires, Turkish firefighters carried out a disingenuous display of assistance, with one helicopter needlessly dropping water from the Göksu Dam on hay bales after the fire was already extinguished. Local Kurds responded to the sham aid by shouting, “Film this disgrace of a helicopter!”

Across the border in Rojava, Kongra Star representatives Nisreen Rajab and Shilan Khalil from the Şêx Meqsûd neighborhood of Aleppo also criticized Turkey’s response, remarking:

“The policies of the occupying state are based on exclusion and the national dimension, as two days ago it repeated the scenario of indifference to the lives of the Kurds, as happened during the earthquake that struck the region last year, in a crime under which the Turkish occupation state violates the United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. The ideal solution to secure the future of the Kurdish people in all parts of Kurdistan, especially Bakur Kurdistan, is to implement the democratic nation project.”

Fire as a Counter-Insurgency Tool

Eliminating forests and trees as cover for armed guerrillas is a traditional counter-insurgency tactic for occupying militaries battling an indigenous resistance movement. From the British Military in the 1950s using herbicides in Malaysia, to the United States Army dropping Agent Orange on the dense jungles of Vietnam, the rationale is that any vegetation provides visual sanctuary for those opposing you, especially from air attacks.

In the case of Turkish forces in Northern Kurdistan, it is no different; however, they have historically decided to proverbially ‘kill two birds with one stone’, both destroying the forests and the Kurdish villages located beside them

During the 1990’s, as the Turkish military burned down over 4,000 Kurdish villages, they also deployed wildfires as a sinister tool to prevent defensive forest ambushes from Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerrillas who were resisting them. And because the best way to decipher the truth about the Turkish state is to view their accusations as confessions, Ankara has even accused PKK guerrillas of burning down their own forests they live in—preposterous propaganda that Erdoğan’s personal ‘media’ stenographers are happy to regurgitate.

This phenomenon of wildfires as a form of counterinsurgency against the Kurdish resistance has been researched by several academics. For example, in an analysis of how the Turkish government set forest fires around Dersim in 1994 to force Kurds to evacuate the area and curtail Kurdish guerrillas, Pinar Dinc, Lina Eklund, Aiman Shahpurwala, et al. produced an article titled ‘Fighting Insurgency, Ruining the Environment: the Case of Forest Fires in the Dersim Province of Turkey’ (2021), which examined if there was a correlation between the number of forest fires from 2015–2018 and Turkish military operations against the PKK. What they found was that statistical analysis suggested a significant relationship between fires and conflicts around Dersim, showing that as the number of conflicts increased or decreased, the number of fires generally followed.

“The state sets the forest on fire every other year, they don’t let the trees grow. As soon as the trees are as tall as a human being, they set another fire.”

Resident of Dersim, from the 2021 research

Other findings from the aforementioned research were that local Dersim residents linked the Turkish state to the fires, which they accused of setting directly through military exercises or refusing to extinguish when they spontaneously erupted. Local testimonies often highlighted how fires began after Turkish soldiers fired howitzers or explosives from police stations and dropped bombs from combat helicopters. Informants in the area added that forest fires typically occurred around Turkish kalekols (military strongholds situated on top of hills), believing that they were set to give security officers a clearer view of the surrounding area.

A report from the Centre for Dersim Studies soon confirmed this perception by concluding that the majority of forest fires in the area were the result of airstrikes and attacks launched from Turkish military strongholds. Another common opinion cited by the local community was that Turkey had long been aiming to bring about demographic change in Dersim, by driving local Kurds away from their homes to open the area for mining and energy companies.

An earlier research article and study conducted by Joost Jongerden, Hugo de Vos, and Jacob van Etten titled ‘Forest Burning as Counterinsurgency in Turkish-Kurdistan: An analysis from space’ (2007), also investigated Turkey’s weaponization of forest fires from 1990 to 2006 against the Kurdish resistance movement. In that study, satellite images were utilized to evaluate the claims of intentional forest burning for village destruction and then cross referenced with geo-data from eyewitness accounts.

What that study discovered was that in 1994 alone, 7.5% of the total forest in Dersim and 26.6% of the forests near villages (within a 1.2 km radius) were burned. Ultimately, the analysis concluded that: “The more severe burning around destroyed and evacuated villages is important evidence for the intentionality behind the use of fire against civilian populations and underscores the claim of human rights abuse.”

The study also found that there was a high frequency of fires in cases of village destruction (85%), suggesting that destroying such Kurdish villages, “almost always went hand in hand with burning of forests, orchards and fields around it.”

But, perhaps, when it comes to understanding the role that forest fires have played around Dersim, it is helpful to look at the words of Kurdish political prisoner Selahattin Demirtaş, who in 2021 from Edirne Prison tied such infernos back to the 1938 Dersim Genocide, professing:

“The reason for not putting out the forest fires in Dersim is not inefficacy. Most of the forests in that region are burned consciously and no one is allowed to intervene. This is a conscious and official policy that has been in effect for decades. Everyone knows this truth, but no one unfortunately dares to say it. Forests are burned on the same grounds Dersim was bombed in 1938.”

This would help explain why Mustafa Karasu, of the Kurdistan Communities Union’s (KCK) Executive Council, reminded Kurds after the latest fire that, “To ask for something from the state that wants to commit genocide against you is to ask for something from your executioner.”

Replacing Trees with Castles

In September of 2020, Anil Olcan conducted an interview with environmental historian Dr. Zozan Pehlivan, where she noted that the Kurds living near Mount Judi (Çiyayê Cûdî) referred to the annual fires as “implementations” (uygulama), an accusatory term implying an operation that is intentionally applied under a certain strategy and rationale.

According to the World Forest Fires Database, between 2003 and 2016, fires in that region of Bakur were most frequent during the area’s harvest season, between July and September. But, whereas such fires traditionally lasted 3–4 days, they now lasted up to 20, leaving a scorched path of ecological destruction and destroyed livelihoods for locals who relied on the forests to survive. Location-wise, the forest fires were concentrated in two primary Kurdish regions: the eastern portion of the Amed-Êlih-Bidlîs triangle and the corridor connecting Sêrt, Colemêrg, and Şirnex.

Curiously, these two regions were also the location for widespread Turkish military lookout towers and fortifications, that were ‘coincidentally’ built throughout the area prior to the breakout of large fires, and would ‘conveniently’ then clear out their sightlines and widen their field of vision. Professor Pehlivan described this process, observing how:

“In the last two decades, an incredible number of guardhouses, or as they call them locally, ‘castle-stations’ (kalekol), have been built in areas where forest fires are most intense. These castle-stations are built on dominant hills like medieval fortified citadels, with the forest areas around them radically trimmed. On top of that, the forests and plateaus around the castle-stations were declared high security zones and closed to civilian access.”

Adjacent surveillance kalekols on the top of hills that have been fully deforested. Kalekol is a combination of the Turkish words “kale” (fortress) and “-kol” from “karakol” (police station).

With these castled areas now closed to civilians, when forest fires did break out, locals were barred from entering to help extinguish the blaze on “security” grounds, meaning they would often consume everything in their wake. The result was cleared out barren hill tops, with Turkish military outposts overlooking the newly scorched wasteland.

Cutting to Sell Instead

Alongside forest fires, cutting down the trees is another way that the Turkish state loots and exploits Northern Kurdistan. One of the areas where this takes place is near Şirnex, where Turkish soldiers are currently using village guards to cut down the trees, after local Kurds refused to do so. In recent months, thousands of trees have been cut down and loaded onto trucks to be transported and sold in other cities.

This follows the pattern of November 2023, near Şirnex’s Gabar Mountain, where after the forests were chopped down, a series of Turkish military watchtowers, roadworks, and oil exploration sites took their place. A few months prior, in August 2023, thousands of trees were also cut down in a rural area near Çewlik, so that the Turkish military could construct a new military base.

In the case around Şirnex, reports from the ground are that everyday dozens of trucks and lorries filled with cut trees head for Riha and Antep. Apparently, the Turkish military overseeing the deforestation, which began in 2021, told the village guards that the process of cutting down all the trees would take ten years in total.

According to Agit Özdemir, from the Mesopotamia Ecology Movement, Şirnex “is a laboratory for the state”, where they are cutting down 500-year-old memorial trees. Which is similar to how jihadists in Turkish occupied Afrin continue to cut down the sacred ribbon trees of Yazidis in that region. But not only that, rather than cutting from the bottom as is typically done, in Şirnex they are digging the roots out of the ground so that trees will never regrow in that area again. According to Özdemir, “The destruction is at such a level that there is no return”, with him adding:

“The goal of this deforestation is dehumanization. In the 1990s, we used to see this during village evacuations: ‘Dry the water, let the fish die.’ Today, this strategy continues with variations. Not only the guerrillas, but the [Kurdish] people as a whole are seen as enemies.”
Piles of deforested trees waiting to be collected for sale, with a kalekol tower in the distant background.

Killing the Living Forest’s Soul

When the Turkish state intentionally starts or refuses to extinguish naturally occurring wildfires in Kurdish areas, their motivations can be multi-faceted. There are the strategic military objectives of turning dense forests, which could conceal Kurdistan’s guerrilla defenders, into barren hills with military outposts on all the high points, which then operate as “no-go” security zones. There are economic objectives to remove the rural Kurdish villagers from the area so that for-profit businesses affiliated with the ruling regime can seize those lands and use them to construct urban housing, develop mine excavations, or conduct oil exploration.

There are also the Turkish ultranationalist objectives of wanting to eradicate Kurdishness and culturally assimilate Kurds living in the region, which is easier to do if you uproot them from their ancestral lands and force them into the coastal cities of western Turkey, where they can be exploited as textile workers and not have enough time or energy to preserve their culture. But one of the deeper objectives and motivations exists on the spiritual and metaphysical level, where the Turkish state wants to eradicate the forests because of the deep religious meaning that many Kurds attribute to them and the animals that call those trees home.

Returning back to the translated reflections of Zozan Pehlivan, in her interview she observes how Kurds are affected economically by the forest fires, outlining how:

“When a forest is in flames, it is not the only thing that burns. There are lives tied to that forest. Locals put beehives in the forest, and they collect firewood to keep warm. In late spring and summer, they prune fresh oaks and collect bundles of branches. After the bundles are stacked, they are tightly covered so as to not dry out in the heat of summer.

During the winter, oak leaves are a source of nutrition for animals. They are called ‘velg’ in Zazakî, a dialect of Kurdish. The remaining dry branches are used for cooking and heating. They are called ‘percin.’ The forest is an important source of energy for the people in the region. In addition, areas where fires break out are lands with pastures.

Good highland grass is harvested in spring to feed the animals during the next winter, while animals graze the remaining grass, which is too short to scythe. When these areas are set on fire, it wreaks havoc on stockbreeding, which is one of the most important sources of income for villagers.”
An aerial comparison of the forest cover on the same mountain in Şirnex in June of 2020 (top), with October 2021 (bottom), following the Turkish state’s deforestation tactics.

However, Pehlivan then addresses that deeper cultural and spiritual element, tying it to the Turkification process in wider Anatolia, where Ankara wants people to forget who they truly are, commenting:

“People develop relationships of belonging with their lands, their trees, flowers, animals, and water, which is emotional as much as economic. When someone loses this relationship, they lose the things that make them who they are. The aim behind the village evacuations of the 1990s was to disrupt the relation the people in this place had developed with their culture and language. It is much harder to disrupt this relationship when people remain in their homes/native lands.”

This is especially true from my experience in Kurdish Alevi (Rêya Heqî) areas, whose beliefs are rooted in nature veneration and share far more in common with Yarsanism, Yazidism, or Zoroastrianism than the prevailing Hanafi Islam of the Turkish state. In this way, it is not a coincidence that these Alevi (often Zazaki-speaking) Kurds consider water and trees to be holy, while the regime in Ankara directly builds dams and deforests in their ancestral sacred areas. Turkey is essentially conducting a ‘spiritual assault’ on what gives these Kurds meaning in life, in the hopes that if they can break them on a soul-ular level, they will be less likely to resist on a political one.

In this equation, by burning down the forests, the Turkish state eliminates the ability to have livestock, both because a lack of milk and meat will decrease the community’s physical energy, but also because if certain mountain goats are seen as mythical beings, what better way to shatter the psyche of a people you want to occupy than to cause them psychological trauma by forcing them to watch them all burn—just like they did their grandparent’s Kurdish village in the 1990s?

Thoreau Redcrow

Dr. Thoreau Redcrow is an American global conflict analyst who specializes in geopolitics, stateless nations, and armed guerrilla movements. He is a frequent speaker before the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva and has been a foreign policy advisor for several groups seeking self-determination. He has previously worked on the ground throughout Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Africa, and the Middle East. He is currently Co-Director of The Kurdish Center for Studies (English branch).

[Anthea]

Rounding up strays across Turkey

Hundreds of animal rights activists in Turkey's southeastern province of Tunceli (Dersim) took to the streets on Sunday, protesting a law recently passed by the Turkish parliament that orders millions of stray dogs to be rounded up and put in shelters across the country

Turkey's parliament passed the law last week despite protests and criticism from opposition parties that have vowed to appeal against the legislation in the constitutional court.

Many people believe the legislation will lead to many dogs being put down.

Animal rights activists in Dersim have called for neutering strays and have vowed not to comply with the law, saying the legislation will pave the way for the killing of strays.

There are no shelters designated for strays in Tunceli and people often feed them on the streets and in parks.

"Currently, there are around 3,500 stray dogs and cats in our province," Ezgi Dogan, president of the Dersim Animal Protection Association (DERHAYKO), told Rudaw. “According to data provided by the police, gendarmerie, municipality, and our association for the last twelve years, we have not come across any data on violence against any animals and there has not been any.”

"We came together for a press release for this bloody law. From the perspective of our province, these animals will continue to roam freely on the streets. As the people of Dersim," Dilsah Mak, an animal lover in Tunceli, said, noting that they have done what is necessary to "ensure that these animals roam freely on the streets and have always been by their side, and for this reason, we will reject this bloody law and do our best to ensure that they roam freely."

Ali Haydar Gur, another resident, also slammed the legislation.

"This law was passed,” Gur said. “There was no such thing in the past, these dogs would protect us, they would guard our homes and our livestock. This law was passed, and we want this law to be abolished. We want everyone to protect these animals.”

Turkey has an estimated four million stray dogs

Under the new rules, any dogs showing aggressive behavior or that have untreatable diseases will be euthanized.

The law was approved with 275 votes in favor and 224 against.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeas ... y/06082024