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Fires in Turkey: We trans­late a thread shared on twit­ter. No addi­tion­al com­ments, for archival purposes.

1. HOW THEY BURNED US…
I am going to list what we have lived though dur­ing 10 days, one after the oth­er, while the coun­try was on fire. So there will be an archive, so those respon­si­ble are not for­got­ten, so that we don’t for­get the dis­hon­or. Then we will see how dif­fi­cult it is to main­tain your men­tal health, in this coun­try. So many scan­dals in 10 days.

2- By omit­ting to ready the fire­fight­ing planes, they let our forests burn down in full view of every­one. The THK planes were exclud­ed from the call for ten­ders. For­est Min­is­ter Bekir Pakdemir­li and Pres­i­dent Erdoğan den­i­grat­ed THK planes.

3- Days lat­er, planes almost the same as those of the THK arrived, from oth­er coun­tries such as Spain and Croa­t­ia to fight the flames. But it was too late.

4- The THK planes they call “antiques” were filmed at THK Uni­ver­si­ty in Etimesgut. Even Cenap Aşçı, THK’s “para­chut­ed” pres­i­dent declared that these planes could be pre­pared for flight, giv­en a bud­get of 4 mil­lion dol­lars. Rus­sia received 1,3 mil­lion Turk­ish lira per day for the rental of 3 planes. Two of them were defective.

5- Once again, For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu asked cit­i­zens to find a solu­tion by say­ing “Our peo­ple are gen­er­ous”. Once again, the “IBAN gov­ern­ment” was imme­di­ate­ly on the scene. 

6- While South­ern Turkey was in flames, THK’s para­chut­ed Pres­i­dent, Cenap Aşçı, announced he had attend­ed a wedding. 

7- It was lat­er revealed how the prop­er­ty of THK, includ­ing its build­ing Tay­yare, was “con­fis­cat­ed” and how the insti­tu­tion was trans­formed into a feed­ing trough. It was revealed that Sez­gin Baran Kork­maz, accused of mon­ey laun­der­ing, was a mem­ber of  THK Uni­ver­si­ty Board of Governors.

8- Sadık Karayel, a mem­ber of THK Uni­ver­si­ty’s Board of Gov­er­nors was the AKP rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the dis­trict of Altın­dağ. Alle­ga­tions were made that Sadık Karayel had intro­duced Nejat Das, accused drug baron in the Batak­lık tri­al to the head of police of the Sul­tan­beyli dis­trict, Necmet­ting Yük­sek. Under every stone, the same names…

9- Erdoğan observed the fire zone from the air. While the pub­lic was expect­ing to see a plane fight­ing against the fire, news agen­cies were serv­ing up pho­tos of Erdoğan, inspect­ing from the air.

10- All the vil­lagers he vis­it­ed in Man­av­gat were wear­ing N95 masks. Erdoğan did not go for a con­do­lence vis­it to the fam­i­ly of Şahin Akdemir, 25, who died bring­ing water to the for­est men attempt­ing to put out the fire. The fam­i­ly was brought to his feet.

11- In Mar­maris, Erdoğan dis­trib­utes tea to the peo­ple. 

12- The Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic was also throw­ing tea on peo­ple in the street…

13- Roads were closed to allow the pas­sage of Erdoğan’s rich con­voy. The fire trucks had to wait.

14- The may­ors of the region had been howl­ing for days call­ing for the inter­ven­tion of fire­fight­ing planes.

15- For­est Min­is­ter Bekir Pakdemir­li who, through lack of planes caused the dis­ap­pear­ance of the forests, blamed the may­ors who had been howl­ing for days “an aer­i­al inter­ven­tion is required!” in the fire zones. He spoke as if the fires had spread from the hous­es toward the forests.

16- While the fires had been ongo­ing for days, Erdo­gan accused the munic­i­pal­i­ties in the Ahaber pro­gram on the ATV. Then, he talked about fires in the Unit­ed States, in Cana­da, in Rus­sia. He said he had request­ed planes from Putin. Of course, no one asked where this pow­er­less­ness came from..

17- Mean­while news broke of the nom­i­na­tion of Barış Say­lak as Forestry Direc­tor in Muğla, a man who became can­di­date to the may­or­ship in Milas, pass­ing from the CHP to the AKP [at the last elec­tions]. The video show­ing him speak­ing with Erdoğan is fresh in every­one’s mind. Barış Say­lak is an image incar­nat­ing the col­lapse of the insti­tu­tions in the “pres­i­den­tial system”. 


18- While Barış Say­lak was occu­py­ing the Direc­tor­ship of the forests in Muğla, the may­or of Milas who beat him by an impor­tant mar­gin at the elec­tions, was spend­ing sleep­less nights and days fight­ing the fire. More­over, he learned through the news reports  of the min­is­ters’ vis­it to the fire zone.

19- The may­ors respon­si­ble for the fire ser­vices were not invit­ed to the dis­as­ter coor­di­na­tion cen­ters. The author­i­ties did not even inform the may­ors. [Video Özgür Özel]


20- Peo­ple car­ry­ing water in pails and fight­ing the flames at the per­il  of their lives, were powerless.

21- But the regime’s allies pro­duced infor­ma­tion say­ing how Turkey was an exam­ple for the world in its fight against the fires. They were almost mak­ing fun of the suf­fer­ing populations.


22- The allies did­n’t care about the burn­ing forests. While their coun­try’s forests were burn­ing, those whose tongues nev­er stop repeat­ing the word patri­o­tism were only con­cerned with pro­tect­ing those in pow­er. They were on the scene with fake news.

23- They did not hes­i­tate in lead­ing the coun­try into chaos the bet­ter to main­tain their own pow­er. İbrahim Karagül, the fired edi­to­r­i­al direc­tor of Yeni Şafak, did not hes­i­tate  to shine in the eyes of Reis in order to get his job back. [In his tweet İbrahim Karagül writes of the “dirty alliance” between the CHP and the PKK who would have “burned the forests”.]

24- Those who want to be rid of their respon­si­bil­i­ties for polit­i­cal gain sowed the seeds of enmi­ty. They pro­voked attempts at lynch­ing. It turned out that the peo­ple in the video had come to the zone in order to extin­guish the fire. Armed civil­ians pro­ceed­ed to iden­ti­ty checks on the roads.

25- The com­man­der of the gen­darmerie attempt­ing to keep chaos from erupt­ing. [In the video, a gen­darmerie com­man­der is attempt­ing to calm peo­ple down].

26- Süley­man Soy­lu [Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or] say­ing: “Am I sup­posed to put out the fire with my hands?”…

27- Peo­ple fight­ing the fires with their hands. They fought for days with­out see­ing a sin­gle plane or heli­copter in the air.


28- While the fires were spread­ing, a reform to the bill open­ing up forests and shores to con­struc­tion, was pub­lished in the Offi­cial Gazette under the sig­na­ture of Pres­i­dent Erdoğan. Soci­ety is right to wor­ry about the pil­lag­ing for prof­it of the burned areas. The past is full of such examples.

29- In allied net­works, the main news was not the dis­as­ter hit­ting the coun­try but the fact that oth­er areas in the world were burn­ing. The aim being, sim­ply, to stay in power.

30- When a few net­works attempt­ed to inform on the for­est fires in the coun­try, they were threat­ened by the RTÜK [Audio­vi­su­al Con­trol Orga­ni­za­tion]. In a let­ter cen­sur­ing them, it was request­ed that they show the work being done to extin­guish the fires. The Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Direc­tor Fahret­tin Altun threat­ened the may­ors on social net­works through his salaried trolls.

31- As the fires went on, TOKİ [the Admin­is­tra­tion for the Devel­op­ment of  Sub­si­dized Hous­ing] shared plans on Twit­ter of future homes to be built. 

32- The may­or of Gün­doğ­muş, mem­ber of the AKP, Mehmet Özv­eren declared: “Cit­i­zens with old hous­es will soon be say­ing ‘I wish our house had burned down’ ”. Who cares about trees, plants, dis­ap­peared liv­ing beings?

33- Dur­ing the Ahaber pro­gram on the ATV, Erdoğan spoke of lost lives through the price per kilo of white meat. Yet, cit­i­zens were dev­as­tat­ed by their sor­row for the plants and the ani­mals that burned along with the forests.


34- It was announced today that Turkey, where the fire­fight­ing planes were not pre­pared by invest­ing 4 mil­lion dol­lars, will offer a 30 mil­lion dol­lar sub­sidy to Soma­lia. Mean­while, the  para­chut­ed pres­i­dent of THK – of which Erdoğan is the hon­orary pres­i­dent – launched a pub­lic appeal for dona­tions for the fire­fight­ing planes..

35- An inves­ti­ga­tion has been opened against those who called for inter­na­tion­al aid on social net­works. Yet, even Erdoğan had made a direct appeal to Putin for planes on ATV. And the Deputy Gen­er­al Direc­tor of the Forestry Direc­torate for his part said that they “accept­ed aid offered [by for­eign coun­tries] so as not to vex them.” 

36- And our peo­ple lost their life, fight­ing the fires. 8 per­sons died and dozens were wounded.

37- Of course, it isn’t over, these scan­dals cov­ered here over 10 days nev­er end. Let’s keep on adding what shows up, togeth­er. So they will not be forgotten.

38- And of course, the scan­dals are not over. They go on. Reporters from FOX, Halk TV and Reuters, cov­er­ing the ther­mal cen­tral of Kemer­li for days were not autho­rized into the region by the gen­darmes. A spe­cial accred­i­ta­tion was in place, allow­ing only allies to go through.

39- Last night, a gang  ran­sacked the pub­lic tele­vi­sion net­work in Mar­maris İçmeler. Pho­tos of one mem­ber of the gang, was shown to be  Mehmet Ağar [a known mem­ber of the mafia, close to those in pow­er]. It was also revealed that the assailants belong to the AKP structure.

Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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