Turkey lodges a tender to buy firefighting aircraft 6 months after wildfires

* Photo: Andrea Graziadio / flickr.com

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Turkey's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has announced a tender for the purchase of new amphibious planes, large and small tanker aircraft and helicopters to help with the firefighting efforts.

The Presidency of Defense Industries has reportedly started the process for the tender. In its statement about the issue, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has announced that "with the aim of fighting forest fires in 2022, a process of tender has been initiated by the Presidency of Defense Industries for an aircraft consisting of five amphibious planes, five large tanker aircraft, 10 small tanker aircraft and 55 helicopters."

"Our works to purchase five amphibious planes in cooperation with the Presidency of Defense Industries are ongoing," it has said, adding that "as amphibious firefighting planes are specially produced upon orders, services will be received by rent until the planes are supplied."

CLICK - The state's responsibility and irresponsibility in forest fires

In the wake of wildfires in summer 2021

The year 2021 has been marked by major forest fires in Turkey. The forest fires that broke out in Antalya's Manavgat in the Mediterranean region on July 28, 2021 spread in the Mediterranean, Aegean, Marmara, Western Black Sea and Southeast Anatolian regions.

As of August 12, 2021, 299 forest fires had erupted in 49 of the 81 provinces in Turkey. Eight people lost their lives in fires. No data has been published as to the number of deceased animals.

As the three fire-fighting planes rented from Russia fell short of putting out the fires, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Russia, Spain, Croatia, Qatar and Iran offered personnel and vehicle support to Turkey.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry did not use the planes of the Turkish Aeronautical Association (THK), which sparked criticism.

As fires spread to residential areas, hundreds of villages and towns were evacuated, thousands were taken to somewhere safe by land and sea.

Only in Manavgat, 56,663 hectares of land were razed while this number was 12,935 in Marmaris, 11,898 in Bodrum, 1,629 in Köyceğiz and 685 in Gündoğmuş, which accounted for 83,810 hectares in total.

These fires razed an area larger than 15 percent of İstanbul's territory and the size of 118 thousand football fields.

According to the data of Turkey's Directorate General of Forestry, 68,579 fires broke out in Turkey in 1988-2019 and they razed an area of 336,824 hectares, which means that an average of 2,143 fires broke out and 10,526 hectares of land were burned every year. (HA/SD)