Stop Fires! 90 per cent of forest fires are caused by humans
"If you saw these mountains, you would cry your ice out.”
An old peasant woman in front of a burnt house says these words, her voice trembling. She laments for the forests burnt down in the fires that turned life into hell on the Muğla - Antalya line in the summer of 2021 and 2022.
And the EU-supported project "Yakman Gari" by Datça Mesudiye Volunteers Association and the short film "Stop Fires, Not Life!" brings their call to the whole of Türkiye and the world. "Yakman Gari!" stands “for Don't burn anymore!” in Aegean dialect of Yakma (“Do not burn!”).
Project Coordinator Nisa Akın says: "We experienced the fire here in July 2022, just when we said that fires should not come to our village. We lost both our nature and our olives and almond trees, which are our source of livelihood."
After the fires in the region, they came together to make the voices of the people in the region heard and decided to tell how life was destroyed in the fire with a short film.
"We founded the association in 2016. It was a small association. We had never received any funding before. When we started looking for funding, we met Sivil Düşün, and thus the 'Yakman Gari' project emerged, in which we also used the word 'gari' identified with Muğla," says Nisa Akın.
Project coordinators Nisa Akın and Işık Önder
Pollution causes fires
The association members attach importance to raising awareness and preventing the human-induced effects of forest fires. Akın explains why: "We have learnt that 90 per cent of forest fires are caused by humans. Especially in summer areas, pollution causes fires to occur and spread: cigarette butts, paper waste, and glass bottles. With the global climate crisis, those glasses create a reflection effect and increase the rate of fire in a region where so many red pines grow."
Işık Önder, the project coordinator, remarks that "cigarette butts do not start burning as soon as they are thrown. It smoulders and takes about 20 minutes to turn into a fire. So maybe the person in the car who threw the cigarette butt has already driven away."
The association, which also received support from Datça and Marmaris municipalities, carried out awareness-raising activities within the scope of the project in addition to the film translated into nine languages. Warning signs were placed in appropriate places on the roads, and children were given climate crisis training.
What is Sivil Düşün?
Sivil Düşün is a European Union programme that supports the rights-based projects of civil society organisations and activists throughout Türkiye. The programme provides in-kind support and expertise for small-scale, short-term and rights-based initiatives.
Click here to watch the film "Stop Fires, Not Life!”
Photos by Erdem Kırım
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