EU offers Turkey assistance as wildfires continue to rage
The government faced calls to step down after it emerged that the country did not have any usable fire-fighting planes in its inventory.
The European Union joined Turkey’s battle to extinguish wildfires that have been raging across the country’s coastal forests for a sixth day as the government faces mounting public anger over its perceived mishandling of the disaster.
At least eight people, among them firefighters and villagers, have died since the blazes erupted July 28 in and around Antalya, a popular tourist destination on the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands of farm animals have also perished in the fires affecting Edirne on the Bulgarian border and Tunceli in the mainly Kurdish southeast.
In Bodrum, panicked vacationers were escorted onto boats to escape the inferno while locals left behind saw their lives literally go up in flames. Images of blackened pine forests, dead sheep and charred homes continue to inundate social media. The hashtag for “Help Turkey” was retweeted millions of times in a rare acknowledgment by a typically proud nation that it's in need of outside assistance.
The government initially balked at accepting any such help, but as its own inadequacies became rapidly exposed, including a lack of operational firefighting aircraft, it caved.
