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Fifty decares (50,000 square meters) of olive groves went up in smoke and a 100-year-old olive tree was reduced to ash, as fire raged through an olive grove in Turkey’s Aydin province on June 25. Strong winds fanned the flames and the rugged ter­rain mak­ing up Aydın’s Sul­tan­hisar dis­trict ham­pered fire­fight­ing efforts.

A joint oper­a­tion between local fire crews, the Forestry Oper­a­tion Direc­torate and fire heli­copters was under­taken but it was sev­eral hours before fire­fight­ers man­aged to con­tain the blaze, believed to have been started by a dis­carded cig­a­rette butt.

In an ironic twist of fate, Turkey’s olive trees had just been saved from being ousted by indus­trial plants, mines and hous­ing projects under pro­posed changes to the ​“olive law,” which would have reduced their level of legal pro­tec­tion.

Erkin Ilguzer, an olive grower and the owner of the Cafe Olive Art Gallery in Akkoy Vil­lage, Didim told Olive Oil Times, ​“Unfor­tu­nately those for­est fires are very com­mon dur­ing the red hot dry sum­mer sea­son.” For the past three days, almost half of Turkey’s for­est fire­fight­ers have been dis­patched to a blaze sweep­ing across Izmir which has already destroyed around 500 hectares of for­est land.

In 2016, 20 acres of olive groves were destroyed along with other crops when fire engulfed farm­land near the tourist resort of Bodrum. Fire­fight­ers bat­tled for seven hours to get the Bodrum inferno under con­trol.

The Aydin olive grove fire broke out as farm­ers, olive oil pro­duc­ers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists were cel­e­brat­ing the quash­ing of a con­tro­ver­sial draft law which would have meant that olive groves with less than 15 trees per decare were reclas­si­fied as fields, mak­ing them vul­ner­a­ble to dis­place­ment by mines, indus­trial plants and hous­ing com­plexes deemed to be of ​“pub­lic ben­e­fit.”

As the fate of Turkey’s olive trees was being decided, lead­ing politi­cians became embroiled in the debate. Faruk Özlü, min­is­ter of sci­ence, indus­try and tech­nol­ogy sym­pa­thized with olive pro­duc­ers and vowed to with­draw the olive tree draft if it ​“harmed even one olive tree” pledg­ing, ​“If I know that even one olive tree is going to be cut down because of this law, I will with­draw it.”

Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Binali Yildirim crit­i­cized oppo­nents of the changes say­ing, ​“It has been pre­sented as if olive groves are being razed for con­struc­tion. That is wrong. Those who do not want Turkey to gain com­pet­i­tive power are engag­ing in this manip­u­la­tion.”

Yildirim accused the oppo­si­tion of ​“pre­sent­ing it in such a way that it is as if we destroyed olive groves,” and claimed, ​“Some­times de facto sit­u­a­tions arise. There are facil­i­ties which are con­structed on for­mer olive groves. The sit­u­a­tion of those facil­i­ties has to be legal­ized. If that grove is on an indus­trial con­struc­tion site, if there is no pos­si­bil­ity to engage in olive agri­cul­ture, the reg­u­la­tion allows the indus­try to use the fields it needs.”

Turkey’s olive trees may be safe, for the moment, from man-made threats, but as the recent fire has shown, they remain vul­ner­a­ble to nat­ural dis­as­ter.

• Hur­riyet Daily News


• Olive Oil Times