Türkiye's forestry service put planes and helicopters over four fires on Friday, three of them in Balıkesir and one in İzmir, as crews worked into the evening to keep the flames off nearby farmland.
The fires broke out on 11 July across three Balıkesir districts, Susurluk, Altıeylül and Dursunbey, and in the Menemen district of İzmir, Anadolu Ajansı reported. As of the agency's evening update, all four were still being fought.
Three of the four started in grassland. In Menemen the fire began on agricultural land and jumped into maquis scrub, pushed by wind. Officials have not determined a cause for any of them.
İzmir's forest regional directorate sent the heavier air fleet: six planes, four helicopters, 20 water tenders, four water-resupply vehicles and two dozers. In Balıkesir, crews worked with two helicopters, seven water tenders and six support vehicles, backed by municipal fire teams.
Anadolu Ajansı said the Balıkesir fires were not close to residential areas. No evacuations and no casualties were reported as of the evening. Two other fires in the same region the same day, in Manisa's Sarıgöl and Antalya's Alanya, were brought under control.
A day before the fires, Türkiye handed a firefighting helicopter to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus for the summer.
At Ercan Airport near Lefkoşa on 10 July, Agriculture and Forestry Minister İbrahim Yumaklı transferred a Ka-32 helicopter, which can drop 2.5 tonnes (2.8 US tons) of water in a pass, to the TRNC forest administration on temporary assignment for what he called the risky season.
"Just as in Türkiye, today we are stationing a helicopter here in the TRNC to protect natural beauty," Yumaklı said at the ceremony. "When needed, we continue to support here from Türkiye." Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz and TRNC Prime Minister Ünal Üstel attended.
The İzmir and Balıkesir fires arrived while southern Europe fought its own. In Spain, a fire near Los Gallardos in Almería had killed at least 12 people and left 23 missing, among the deadliest in the country's history, the BBC reported, with four Britons among the dead. Temperatures there sat near 40 °C (104 °F).
France has counted more than 25,000 hectares (61,800 acres) burned since January, roughly double last year's pace, with nine western departments placed on red heat alert and an extreme-heat emergency plan switched on. Fires were also burning on Sicily and in Greece.
No Turkish or foreign agency has tied the Balıkesir and İzmir fires to that heat wave, and the official cause in each case remains open. Meteoroloji had issued a heavy-rain warning for parts of northwestern Türkiye the day before.
Cooling work at the four sites was continuing on Friday evening, and investigators had opened files into how each fire started.