The black sign of the destruction of forests and agricultural lands in Türkiye

According to the international group Tasnim news agency, these days in Turkey and in a situation where all of The economic crisis and unprecedented inflation are talking, bigger issues such as the destruction of forests and the removal of millions of hectares of land from the cycle of agriculture and crop production have remained in the shadows. But two Turkish scientific and expert foundations in the fields of agriculture and forestry have announced that the country’s food security and the state of forests are in danger. Because a large part of the land that was cultivated before has now been turned into villas and recreation centers, and hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest have been destroyed due to the mining and energy industries.

Turkish experts believe that continuing the current trend will do something that the supply of more than half of the necessities and food will depend on imports and the Turkish economy will be in a more difficult situation. Agriculture
The influx of urban dwellers to rural areas to build villas has caused many high-quality lands to be removed from the cycle of crop and horticulture production, and with a wide wave of land use change, Turkey’s agriculture be in danger 

Shamsi Birgdar, the head of “Turkey Chambers of Agriculture” (TZOB), announced that the phenomenon of changing the use of agricultural land to luxury family and recreational villas has become a dangerous syndrome and has disrupted the structure of agriculture and the order of rural communities. .

Before, the total cultivated land of Turkey was 26.6 million hectares, but in just 20 years, this huge capital of food production has decreased to 23.9 million hectares.

Because the construction of villas and gas, water, electricity and telephone wiring, road construction, sewage network and other facilities Its concrete changes cause planting and harvesting operations and the operation of agricultural machinery to face more obstacles and difficulties, and all these issues have a negative effect on the efficiency and production of the product. The fragmentation of agricultural lands and the loss of large fields also disrupts other issues such as the pattern of cultivation, irrigation, ownership and economic activity on land, and year by year, more and more skilled farmers leave the production cycle and become workers in cities. And fake jobs appear. 

The head of Turkish Chambers of Agriculture says: “Soil is the most valuable asset not only for farmers but for all humanity. Soil and land, which has been formed over thousands and even millions of years, is the most important legacy that can be left for future generations. So protecting the soil is everyone’s responsibility. Leaving agricultural lands out of the production cycle and turning them into villas and swimming pools for the rich is a serious injury, and parallel to that, hundreds of thousands of hectares of our gardens and fields have been acquired by tourism and industry activists, and they are also from the production process. are out.

What is destroying Turkey’s forests?
Many critics of Turkey’s ruling party They believe that the change in the laws and regulations related to the exploration of mines and the issuance of permits for the extraction of mineral stones has made it illegal to issue permits for mining in the heart of forests in most provinces of Turkey.

In a situation where government authorities not only do not deal with illegal mining activities, but also pave their way, civil society and environmental protection activists have come forward and created many institutions and foundations to protect forests.

(TEMA) announced in its latest report that 410 thousand hectares of Turkey’s forest area has been lost in the last 11 years due to mining and energy activities. This foundation also emphasized that desertification and drought, floods, fires and other problems have seriously damaged the forests of Turkey, but three important factors, namely mining, energy pipelines and energy road construction, cause destruction far more than fires and natural disasters. And it has been destroyed. 

Deniz Atac, head of the TEMA foundation, said about the current situation: “The danger of desertification of agricultural lands and the loss of forests in Turkey is a serious and deep crisis, and dealing with this crisis requires national determination and action. It is urgent. It is an essential responsibility to protect our present and future. Our soil is our heritage and our future. We must not forget that healthy soil means healthy life. We must remember the fact that Turkey is facing painful drought and climate change in addition to the problem of forest loss and agricultural land use change. We all have the duty to reduce these effects”.

This environmental researcher continued: “We have been working in this field for thirty years. We came to the field in 1994 with the slogan (Let Turkey not become a desert) and the growth rate of our activities and the increase of several thousand volunteers is amazing. However, no matter how hard we try, we are still not against the amount of destruction and negative changes, and many do not know that Turkey is seriously at risk of widespread desertification and precautionary measures should be taken as soon as possible. Unfortunately, today we are facing the same situation in a much more serious way. Soil degradation is increasing due to problems such as the destruction of forests and grassland-pasture lands caused by human activities, erosion, pollution, salinization and acidification. 

Environmental activists in Turkey say, one of the big problems in this area is the legal vacuum. In almost none of the provinces of Turkey, there are no restrictions on changing the use of agricultural land, and mining companies, with the lowest level of economic justification, harvest hundreds of tons of stone in a short period of time after cutting down the forest trees. And they leave the area. But one of the consequences of these measures is that in the aerial photos taken from the forest areas, active and abandoned mines stand out like infectious white wounds in the green expanse of the forests. Another consequence of land use change. Agriculture, the increase in dependence on imports, currency exchange of imports, and the increase in the price of food in Turkish markets and putting pressure on tens of millions of poor families.

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