Experts push for stricter penalties as Türkiye fights wildfires

ISTANBUL

With Türkiye battling a surge in forest fires, legal experts are calling for urgent reforms to impose harsher penalties and ensure stricter enforcement against those responsible, whether through carelessness or deliberate acts of arson.

Türkiye has grappled with wildfires in various regions in recent days, driven by scorching temperatures.

According to Agriculture and Forestry Minister İbrahim Yumaklı, only the Harmancık fire in the northwestern city of Bursa, which started on July 25, continues to burn. Other forest fires in several other regions were contained as of July 29.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently stated that 96 percent of the 4,247 forest fires recorded since the beginning of 2025 were caused by human activity.

Among the most serious cases is the arson incident in the Bursa fire, where a 30-year-old man was arrested. The suspect, a former military officer expelled in 2021 over links to the FETÖ terrorist organization, confessed to setting trees on fire using gasoline.

Experts say that such incidents highlight urgent flaws in current legislation and its implementation.

Lawyer Doğan Erkan argued that intentional and negligent actions leading to forest fires must be met with heavier punishments.

“In cases of deliberate arson, there should be a specific clause under the ‘crimes against the constitution’ section of the penal code, since forests are protected under the constitution,” he told daily Hürriyet.

According to environmental and forestry lawyer Professor Dr. Osman Devrim Elvan, Türkiye already has some of the harshest legal penalties for forest-related crimes in Europe.

However, he identified several other factors behind the country’s ongoing fire crisis: Lack of public awareness, deregulation favoring non-forest use of land, insufficient supervision of forest permits and problems in the enforcement of penal code provisions.

“What matters most is not how we fight fires once they start, but how we prevent them from happening in the first place. The government should use the firefighting budget more effectively to invest in prevention,” he said.

Environmental law expert Cömert Uygar Erdem added that increasing penalties alone is not enough.

“People don’t set forests on fire just because the punishment is low. The real issue is that enforcement is weak. Many forest fires remain unsolved or their causes go undetermined,” he said.

Currently, for individuals who intentionally set forests on fire, the penalty is no less than 10 years in prison in Türkiye.

According to Erdem, deeper issues lie in inadequate forest protection policies.

Retired forestry official Necdet Demirsu, on the other hand, warned against oversimplifying wildfire solutions by replacing forestland with agricultural trees such as olives or fruit orchards, stressing that such practices disrupt the ecosystem.