A hospital emptied on Wednesday morning. The 45 patients under treatment at Seydikemer State Hospital were moved to Fethiye as a precaution while a forest fire burned nearby, and by afternoon another 202 residents had been taken out of 121 homes.
The latest. The fire started at about 7:45am on 29 July 2026 in a field at Bayır Mahallesi, in the Seydikemer district of Muğla, and spread quickly into forest on a strong wind. The Muğla governor's office says the cause has not been determined. Four houses have been damaged, three of them left in ruins. Crews were still fighting the fire in the middle of the afternoon, with the Fethiye-Seydikemer-Antalya road shut to civilian traffic.
Update, 31 July 2026. Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum published the first damage assessment on Friday. It puts 39 separately titled units at Seydikemer heavily damaged or destroyed, the largest share of 65 counted across Antalya, Muğla and Balıkesir. The figure uses the term Turkish property law applies to a separately titled flat, shop or house, and it is far above the four damaged houses the province reported on the day. Kurum said survey teams are still working. The cause at Seydikemer is still undetermined.
What the province put on it
The response reads like a small campaign.
In a statement carried by the ANKA agency, the governor's office counted 23 aircraft over the fire, five planes and 18 helicopters, and 835 people working the line. On the ground it listed 93 fire tenders, 24 water tankers, 23 pieces of heavy machinery, 73 other vehicles, three first-response vehicles and eight ambulances.
The statement puts the ground total at 137 vehicles. Its own itemized list adds up to 230.
Six of those ground vehicles are TOMA, the armored water cannon trucks normally sent to protests, working here as tankers.
The evacuation ran through Sarıyer Mahallesi and the Bayır, Orta Bayır and Kırsecik areas. Another 50 animals were moved to safe ground, 20 cattle and 30 sheep and goats.
Muğla's metropolitan municipality sent 11 fire vehicles and 27 firefighters, plus an excavator, a grader, water tankers, a bus and a catering truck for the crews. Mayor Ahmet Aras went to the fire area and said the city had mobilized everything it has.
The wind was forecast
İbrahim Yumaklı, the agriculture and forestry minister, posted a warning on 28 July that winds reaching 80 km/h (50 mph) were expected in many provinces this week, the coast worst of all.
Strong wind, he wrote, is the main reason fires grow past the point where crews can hold them. He asked people to burn nothing outdoors and named the things that start these fires: a spark, a small ember, a cigarette thrown away still lit.
He also set out what the ministry has: 14 drones, 776 fire watchtowers, 184 of them what he called smart towers, and 28,000 forestry workers. No technology and no crew, he wrote, counts for as much as the care ordinary people take.
Seydikemer is the second district this week
Fethiye, next door, burned days ago. Fire went through the Gökçeovacık and İnlice neighborhoods, damaging houses and farmland, and Muğla's damage assessment commission is still in those fields working out what people lost and what they will need.
Antalya is burning at the same time. A fire that began before dawn on Tuesday at Üzümlü, in the Kaş district, was into its second day on Wednesday, fought by 155 people with 26 tenders across steep, rocky ground. Crews worked it through the night alone, and the helicopters and planes rejoined at first light.
Two more fires broke out on Wednesday morning in Kumluca and were held, one within an hour and one within half of that. The jandarma has opened investigations into how both started.
No casualties have been reported.
Four aircraft went to Spain and France
On 28 July, the day before Seydikemer caught, Türkiye sent two firefighting aircraft to France. Yumaklı announced that deployment, made on France's request and on Erdoğan's instruction, and referred back to two aircraft already sent to Spain on 26 July. Türkiye uses what it has for other countries' forests as well as its own, he said.
Emmanuel Macron quoted that post and answered it in Turkish: "Teşekkürler Türkiye."
Turkish aircraft had already gone out once this season, on a different footing. On 10 July, Yumaklı handed a Ka-32 helicopter to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus at Ercan Airport, to sit through what he called the risky months there. That one went out before any fire, as a seasonal posting. It drops 2.5 tonnes (2.8 US tons) of water in a pass.
Nobody has suggested the loans left Muğla short, and the province had 23 aircraft over Bayır by afternoon. Türkiye has sent aircraft to three places in 19 days, and on the twentieth its own southwest was burning in two provinces at once.
The Fethiye-Seydikemer-Antalya road was still shut to civilian traffic on Wednesday afternoon. Drivers were told to find another way around and to keep the hard shoulder clear, because that is the lane the tankers use to get up to the fire.
Where it stands
Ground crews worked the fire through Wednesday night, and the aircraft came back at first light on Thursday.
By Thursday evening Yumaklı listed Seydikemer among six fires still burning in five provinces, and said it was "largely under control." Muğla had a second fire by then, a new one at Yeşilüzümlü in Fethiye, which he said had had its energy reduced.
Seydikemer turned out to be one of 169 fires Türkiye fought in the space of a day. That count, and what it cost, is covered separately below.
This article is the record of the Seydikemer fire through 29 July 2026. The wider fire emergency is covered in the piece linked below.