Turkey’s forest directorate fails to buy ‘essential’ aircraft for wildfires despite budget

In the first half of 2024, the Turkish Directorate of Forestry did not spend the 500 million liras allocated for the purchase of firefighting aircraft, which were deemed "essential" targets for fighting wildfires in its program.

Sunday August 04 2024 02:22 pm

Duvar English

The Turkish government has not realized its planned target of purchasing “essential” aerial firefighting aircraft mentioned in the "Forest Firefighting" program at the beginning of the year, according to the data from the General Directorate of Forestry (OGM) for the first half of 2024.

OGM set 30 targets for the first half of 2024 to fight against forest fires, according to the reporting of daily BirGün.

Among the targets, the purchase of fire-fighting planes and helicopters was included, and the administration allocated a total expenditure of 500 million Turkish liras ($15.1 million) for this aim.

OGM could not reach its target of purchasing aircraft, which are critical in the first response to forest fires and preventing their growth, before the fire season.

The directorate on Aug. 1 announced that the firefighter teams have fought a total of 334 fires in a week.

Although the directorate also tried to purchase 80 first-response vehicles with a total expenditure of 171.88 million liras, it could not add new vehicles to its inventory in the first half of 2024.

OGM's target of purchasing five graders and 10 trailers was also not fulfilled.

The low expenditure of funds allocated by the directorate for the protection of forests and forest resources, as well as the development and expansion of forests, also drew attention.

Accordingly, of the 14.45 billion liras ($436.5M) allocated for forest protection, only 4.6 billion liras ($139M) was spent, and of the 5.06 billion liras ($152.9M) allocated for forest expansion, only 2.1 billion liras ($63.4M) was used.