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Petter Pilesjö

Petter Pilesjö

Professor

Petter Pilesjö

Fighting Insurgency, Ruining the Environment : the Case of Forest Fires in the Dersim Province of Turkey

Author

  • Pinar Dinc
  • Lina Eklund
  • Aiman Shahpurwala
  • Ali Mansourian
  • Augustus Aturinde
  • Petter Pilesjö

Summary, in English

Environmental destruction has long been used as a military strategy in times of conflict. A long-term example of environmental destruction in a conflict zone can be found in Dersim/Tunceli province, located in Eastern Turkey. In the last century, at least two military operations negatively impacted Dersim’s population and environment: 1937–38 and 1993–94. Both conflict and environmental destruction in the region continued after the 1990s. Particularly after July 2015, when the brief peace process that began in 2013 ended, conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) resumed and questions arose about the cause of forest fires in Dersim. In this research we investigate whether there is a relationship between conflict and forest fires in Dersim. This is denied by the Turkish state but asserted by many Dersim residents, civil society groups, and political parties. We use a multi-disciplinary approach, combining methods of qualitative analysis of print media (newspapers), social media (Twitter), and local accounts, together with quantitative methods: remote sensing and spatial analysis. Interdisciplinary analysis combining quantitative datasets with in-depth, qualitative data allows a better understanding of the role of conflict in potentially exacerbating the frequency and severity of forest fires. Although we cannot determine the cause of the fires, the results of our statistical analysis suggest a significant relationship between fires and conflict in Dersim, indicating that the incidence of conflicts is generally correlated with the number of fires.

Department/s

  • Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
  • MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World
  • Middle Eastern Studies
  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • Centre for Geographical Information Systems (GIS Centre)

Publishing year

2021

Language

English

Pages

481-493

Publication/Series

Human Ecology

Volume

49

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Earth and Related Environmental Sciences

Keywords

  • Armed conflict
  • Dersim/Tunceli
  • Environmental damage
  • Forest fires
  • Kurds
  • PKK
  • Remote sensing
  • Turkey

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1572-9915