As it braces for a season of forest fires this summer, Turkey hopes more aerial vehicles will help in its fight against the potential disaster. More recently, four Chinook helicopters were delivered to Turkey from the United States and six others are on the way to the country, hoping to be ready for wildfires that devastated large swathes of forests last year, the worst in recent memory.

Brought to Turkey by CMC, a local company that won the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry tender for the acquisition of helicopters, the Chinooks will be used by the Directorate General of Forestry. Chinooks, manufactured by Boeing, had first arrived in Turkey during the 2021 forest fires, courtesy of Washington, which joined other countries in offering assistance to Ankara. The helicopters were widely employed during the California wildfires and are also in use in other countries.

The tandem-rotor, heavy-lift helicopters, distinguished among their counterparts for their maneuvering abilities in narrow areas and at high speed, are equipped with Bambi buckets, which can carry 10 tons of water.

The Directorate General of Forestry operates a fleet of three airplanes and 39 helicopters to fight forest fires and allocated $154.1 million (TL 2.4 billion) this year for the acquisition of planes and helicopters. Along with helicopters and planes, the directorate employs drones for observation and early detection of fires. It plans to acquire four more drones this year, bringing the total number of drones to eight.

Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Vahit Kirişçi told a meeting on forest fire preparedness in Istanbul on Monday that the air fleet used to intervene in forest fires will be expanded this year to 55 helicopters and 20 firefighting planes. He noted that they also trained thousands of people, including 20,000 military personnel and 100,000 volunteer citizens in forest fire intervention, in addition to renewed training for some 21,000 forestry services personnel. He noted that they also set up professional crews who underwent special training and would be tasked with extinguishing efforts in fires in places not easily accessible by firefighters and equipment. Kirişçi highlighted that Turkey is also a member of the European Union Civil Defense Mechanism which enables it to benefit from a pool of resources to fight wildfires, including firefighting planes. In addition, Turkey itself has provided firefighting training for personnel from 16 countries, the minister stated.

From the beginning of 2021, throughout the high season of forest fires (up until August), Turkey was embattled with at least 2,105 forest fires and hundreds of smaller fires in rural regions. Midsummer wildfires in the country's southern provinces, including Antalya and Muğla, were the worst, devastating entire villages and killing at least eight people. Soaring temperatures, low humidity and strong winds prolonged the fires, which prompted the evacuation of hundreds of people, particularly in villages near the epicenter of fires.

The government has pledged to replenish the burned forests, rejecting allegations that the fire sites would be opened for residential development. Later last year, the first mass planting campaigns were launched in burned forests.

Minister Kirişçi said at Monday's meeting that Turkey has ranked first in Europe in forestation and fourth in the world. "Every year, we plant more than 600 million saplings. We had 20.8 million hectares of forests in 2002 and aim to increase it to 23.4 million hectares," he added.