In Turkey, the effects of the devastating forest fires that began on July 28 are far more dramatic for agriculture and forestry than for tourism.

The 230+ forest fires, some of which have not been extinguished, have destroyed some of the best forest and most productive arable land along the Mediterranean coast.

Tobias Piller

Economic correspondent for Italy and Greece based in Rome.

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Rainer Hermann

Editor in politics.

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Tourism, on the other hand, got away with it with a black eye, said Deniz Ugur, the boss of Bentour, the leading Turkey provider in Germany, the FAZ has temporarily changed bookings, albeit in small numbers.

Because in the greater Antalya area only Manavgat and Side were affected by the fires, but not Kemer and Belek.

Other large providers such as DER and TUI confirm this trend.

Environment intact again in fifty years

In addition, there have been no cancellations of planned trips, says Ugur. On the contrary, he and other Turkey providers could observe that Turkey is currently clearly outperforming Spain in new bookings on the Iberian Peninsula due to the pandemic risk. Traditionally, 33 percent of package tours sold in Germany are in Spain and 31 percent in Turkey. Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy is confident that the 2021 target of 25 million foreign holidaymakers and an income of 20 billion dollars will be achieved despite the forest fires. In the record year of 2019, it was still $ 34.5 billion.

The consequences are dramatic for agriculture and forestry as well as for several dozen small villages that have burned down completely.

According to estimates by Turkish experts, an area twice the size of Lake Constance was destroyed.

The largest charred areas are in the provinces of Antalya, which includes Manavgat, and Mugla.

Sometimes it will take fifty years before the environment is intact again.

The MP Cetin Osman Budak of the opposition CHP, who represents Antalya in parliament, said that ten times more forest had burned down since July 28th than in all the forest fires of the past year combined.

The resulting damage amounts to the equivalent of 20 billion euros.

Tourism business only slightly affected

The damage to agriculture cannot yet be estimated. One of the country's most important agricultural cultivation areas stretches between the coastal strip used for tourism and the Taurus Mountains. The number of houses destroyed by the forest fires is said to be more than 4,000. The government has announced rapid and unbureaucratic aid.

In Greece and Italy, despite sensational reports, the tourism business in the major travel destinations is also only slightly affected. The Greek population, on the other hand, suffers. Great fires have been raging in northern Athens for days. Only a few kilometers from the wall of fire is the Athens millionaire suburb of Kifissia, usually with green gardens and lots of trees. Since the chiefs of civil protection and fire brigades reserved the fire-fighting planes mainly for the north of Athens, the island of Evia, east of Athens, got into trouble.

The second largest island in Greece is popular with Greeks as a location for weekend houses, also because it can be reached directly from the mainland via two bridges without a ferry. The island is not one of the most important travel destinations for foreign tourists. The hotels in the north of Evia no longer accept guests in August. The connecting roads across the island can currently only be used by emergency services. It suits the Greek tourism industry that “Sun, Sea and Islands” are still being sold in August. Many of the islands in the Aegean are sparsely forested. The fire was quickly extinguished on large holiday islands such as Rhodes, and large hotels ensured their supply with emergency generators during the power failure in one evening.

In Italy the situation on the fire front has calmed down. Large vacation destinations were not affected anyway. The third most important newspaper in the country, the Turin Stampa, has not reported on fires for six days. The civil protection reported that there had been more than 44,000 extinguishing operations from June 15 to August 7, compared with 26,000 in the previous year. Fire-fighting planes and fire-fighting helicopters were sent to 746 locations, more than twice as many as in 2020. Similar numbers were last seen in 2017.