Turkey’s deadly fires raise the heat for Erdogan

THE FIRES crept up the hills, scattered and grew, helped by the wind, and raced down towards the shore. In some places, desperate locals rushed to the sea, filling up plastic buckets with water to ward off the flames approaching their homes. Others ran or drove for their lives. The sky turned grey, then orange. By the time the smoke had cleared, stretches of Turkey’s coastal paradise, once covered in pine forests and olive trees, were in ashes.At least eight people have died in the fires along Turkey’s southern and western coasts at the end of July, following record temperatures and a severe drought. Thousands more have been evacuated, including tourists from seaside resorts, some boarding boats to escape. Nearly 160,000 hectares of forest have burned in Turkey this year, according to the European Forest Fire Information System, four times the average between 2008 and 2020. Wildfires have also been raging this summer elsewhere in the region (see map).