Türkiye's forestry crews went to 169 fires in the space of a day. By Thursday evening 163 of them were out, and six were still burning across five provinces.

The latest. On Saturday 1 August 2026 Yumaklı said the fires at Balıkesir's Gömeç and Mersin's Aydıncık-Gülnar had been brought under control. He had said the day before that Muğla's Fethiye was completely under control, and that Alanya and Gülnar-Aydıncık were largely so. Aydın's Çine was still burning when he last spoke about it. Two fires have started since the count below: one at Susurluk in Balıkesir on Friday afternoon, which Sözcü reports has damaged 450 hectares, and one at Foça in İzmir near the naval base, where crews held a line in front of a prison and its staff housing and went to alarm over the military ammunition depots. The Foça fire was brought under control.

The record from 30 July. Agriculture and Forestry Minister İbrahim Yumaklı gave the count that day, covering everything since the previous day. He said 110 of the 169 started outside forest land. The fires at Kaş in Antalya and Eğirdir in Isparta are fully contained. Of the six still going, Mersin's Gülnar and Muğla's Seydikemer are "largely under control" and the fires at Alanya and Fethiye have had their "energy reduced," in his words, while crews are still working hard at Aydın's Çine and Balıkesir's Gömeç. Five people have been hurt at Gömeç, none of them seriously. At Çine, where the fire started on Thursday afternoon and was still burning after dark, houses on the summer pastures have been evacuated and first assessments say some of them have burned. The Fethiye fire is a new one, at Yeşilüzümlü, and not the fire that went through Gökçeovacık and İnlice in the same district last week.

The two that started this weekend

A fire began at about 1pm on Friday on farmland at Yıldız, in the Susurluk district of Balıkesir, and the wind carried it into forest.

Sözcü reports that 450 hectares (1,110 acres) of oak, black pine, red pine, beech and hornbeam were damaged, and that the flames moved toward the neighboring Kepsut district. Three villages were put on standby to leave, Yıldız with 438 people, Bozen with 333 and Gökçeağaç with 228. Balıkesir's metropolitan municipality sent four buses and Susurluk's sent four minibuses in case the order came. It did not.

The response was seven planes, four helicopters, 26 fire tenders, 11 municipal fire vehicles, 11 water tankers, two dozers, two excavators, three police water cannon pressed into service, and 395 people. Aircraft stopped at dark and ground crews worked through the night. The wind dropped, the advance slowed, and the planes went back up at first light.

The other one is the reason Foça spent Friday afternoon on alarm.

A fire started at about 3:45pm near the Foça Naval Base Command in İzmir and spread quickly on a strong wind. The wind was blowing out to sea, which helped, but the flames moved toward things that could not be moved. Firefighters built a defensive line to keep them off an animal shelter, a prison and the prison's staff housing. The military ammunition depots in the area were treated as the critical point, and the response went to alarm.

İzmir's metropolitan fire service sent four tenders and two heavy tankers, the regional forestry directorate five planes, two helicopters, 11 tenders, a water tanker and a dozer, and the district municipality sent its own tankers. The fire was brought under control.

The Gömeç fire, and the five people hurt

It started at about 1:30pm on Wednesday in open country at Kumgedik, in the Gömeç district of Balıkesir, and the wind took it in two directions at once.

Inside Balıkesir it reached Ayvalık and Burhaniye. The provincial governor's office counts nine neighborhoods affected, four in Gömeç, four in Ayvalık and one in Burhaniye. It also crossed the provincial line into İzmir.

Five people have been hurt fighting it: two firefighters from Balıkesir's metropolitan municipality, one employee of İzmir's, one forestry worker and one civilian. They were treated at Ayvalık State Hospital and Atatürk City Hospital, and none is in danger, the governor's office said.

Where it went in İzmir matters. The fire reached the Kozak plateau in the Bergama district, known for its stone pines and the nuts they produce, and moved into the Demircidere and Okçular neighborhoods.

People who live there joined in. Villages put the fire tankers handed out to their headmen earlier to use, working next to municipal water tankers sent up from İzmir.

Crossing the line changed who was fighting it. İzmir's metropolitan fire service and the İzmir regional forestry directorate took up a fire that had started as Balıkesir's, with helicopters and planes overhead.

What emptying a district looks like

The evacuations this week have been large and they have been spread out.

Three Ayvalık neighborhoods were cleared as a precaution, Hacıveliler, Tıfıllar and Bağyüzü, and the 63 people who left them are being housed in a student dormitory in the town. Livestock went out with them, 720 head by the governor's count on Thursday and 944 by its count on Friday.

At Edremit in the same province, where fire went through forest and olive groves at Altınoluk, 210 homes and about 650 people were moved out. At Alanya, the district governor Şakir Öner Öztürk said 45 houses were emptied.

At Seydikemer in Muğla on Wednesday, 202 people from 121 homes left, along with 45 patients from the state hospital and 50 farm animals.

Öztürk said no house at Alanya was damaged and nobody was hurt there. He put the response at two planes, two helicopters, 93 vehicles, 130 teams and 325 people, and said he expected the fire under control on Thursday if the weather held.

Three sets of books on one fire

Counting the response at Gömeç depends on who is doing the counting, and all three counts are partial.

The Balıkesir governor's office, adding up every agency, lists six planes, seven helicopters, 56 fire tenders, 40 municipal fire vehicles, 57 water tankers, 13 dozers, 25 excavators and graders, eight ambulances, and 920 people plus 60 forest volunteers. AFAD, the Red Crescent and the national medical rescue teams are on the ground with them.

The Forestry Directorate, counting only its own, gives seven planes, seven helicopters, 80 tenders and 455 people. Balıkesir's metropolitan mayor, Ahmet Akın, puts his municipality's share at 160 vehicles and 450 firefighters.

The plane count differs by one between the province and the forestry service. Neither has explained the gap.

The fire that reached the summer pastures

The other fire still running at nightfall was at Çine in Aydın, and it is the one that has taken houses.

It began at about 3:02pm on Thursday on Madran Dağı, in the Kavşit neighborhood, and the wind pushed it toward Mutaflar and Tatarmemişler. The cause is not known.

When it came at the settlement on Kavşit Yaylası, the houses there were evacuated and cattle and smaller livestock were driven out. Some of those houses have burned, according to first assessments. No count has been given.

Update, 31 July 2026. There is still no count, and the reason is now on the record. Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum published a first damage assessment on Friday covering Antalya's Kumluca, Muğla's Seydikemer and Balıkesir's Gömeç, and said the teams had started work where the fires were brought under control. Çine is not under control, and it is not on his list.

The fire passed 24 hours on Friday. It lost most of its force overnight when the wind dropped, and daylight showed wide stretches of blackened forest and trees burned through. Then the wind came back and the flames went up again. Nine helicopters, three planes, 42 tenders, nine water tankers, four dozers and 315 people are working to keep it off the settlements.

What is known about the damage comes from the people who live there rather than from any office.

Muharrem Çınar, who farms and keeps animals on the plateau, lost his commercial vehicle. He had left it lower down and gone up for his motorbike, and the fire got there before he came back. Where he was standing there was nothing, he said, but 300 to 500 meters (1,000 to 1,600 feet) below him it was different. "There's heavy damage. Animals burned." He spent the night on the mountain opening the water in his pools.

A pickup was destroyed in the same area.

Bircan Öter, a trader in Çine, said the slopes running down toward Mutaflar and Kavşit are what families there live on, growing fruit and vegetables and keeping animals. "Madran Yaylası was our lung," he said. "This year we have a very big loss."

The jandarma closed the roads into the fire and barred entry to parts of the plateau.

The forestry service sent 127 people, four helicopters, two planes, 17 tenders, five water tankers and three dozers when the call came. Roughly nine hours later the Aydın governor's office, counting every agency rather than one, put 478 people, 153 ground vehicles and eight aircraft on the fire, five helicopters and three planes, drawn from the forestry service, AFAD, the metropolitan fire brigade, the jandarma, the police, the medical rescue teams, the state water works and four municipalities.

Those two numbers measure different things, so the gap between them is not all growth.

The flames were still lighting the mountain after dark.

Update, 1 August 2026. Çine is into a third day. When Yumaklı listed the fires on Friday morning he put Fethiye fully out and Gömeç, Alanya and Gülnar-Aydıncık largely under control, and said air and ground crews would keep working at Çine "without interruption until it is completely under control." He has not mentioned it since. Seydikemer, which he called largely under control on 30 July, has also dropped out of his updates, and no one has declared it out.

The bill where the fires are already out

Containment is not the end of the accounting.

At Kumluca in Antalya, the fire that started at Yazır on Wednesday was held overnight by 281 people with two planes, four helicopters, 15 tenders and 30 fire vehicles. The district governor, Bahadır Güneş, said it took 50 hectares (124 acres) and damaged about 15 households, and that survey work would continue.

That is one fire out of 169, and it is one of the ones that went well.

The causes, mostly unestablished

Update, 31 July 2026. The Gömeç fire's cause has since been established. The Balıkesir governor's office says the provincial gendarmerie traced it to a welding spark in a garden, and a court has jailed two men pending trial. That is covered in a separate piece linked at the foot of this one.

The cause is undetermined at Seydikemer, at Fethiye's Yeşilüzümlü, at Alanya's Sapadere, at Çine and at Edremit. The jandarma opened files on two other fires in the Kumluca district on Wednesday.

The single exception is Dikili in İzmir, where a maquis fire near a housing development at Çandarlı was claimed to have started when a transformer blew. That account has not been confirmed.

Yumaklı had warned on 28 July that winds of up to 80 km/h (50 mph) were coming to many provinces this week, and that wind is the thing that takes a fire past the point where crews can hold it. Two days later he was counting 169 of them.

"Forest heroes are fighting for the Green Homeland," he wrote on Thursday. "Don't you go causing new fires."