In the Kurdish province of Şırnak) tree felling continues in the mountainous region of Besta despite Turkish authorities’ announcements to the contrary. According to information from the region, the deforestation is being carried out under military supervision by so-called village guards. Officially, the action is justified on security grounds.
For around five years, trees have been felled on a large scale in several mountainous regions of the province, including Cudi, Gabar, and Besta. Environmentalists and local residents speak of increasing ecological destruction, which is being legitimized under the pretext of military necessity.
On October 19, Birol Ekici, the governor of Şırnak, emphasized at an event marking “Local Leaders’ Day” that no more trees would be felled in the province in the future. “We will no longer turn a blind eye to illegal logging,” Ekici said at the time.
However, new images from the region appear to contradict these statements. According to these images, large-scale deforestation continues in the areas of Xirbgebestê and Avyan—between the city center of Şırnak and the district of Pervari in the neighboring province of Siirt.
Deforestation in restricted areas
The footage shows village guards from Hosyan cutting down trees, some of which are decades old, with chainsaws. The trunks are then sawn up, loaded onto tractors, and transported out of the area under the supervision and with the permission of the military.
The Besta region has been considered sensitive in terms of security policy since the 1990s. During this period, 18 villages in the area were evacuated for military reasons. Since then, civilians have only been allowed access with special permission. However, the village guards employed for the tree felling work are apparently regularly granted passage through military checkpoints.
Use of timber unclear
According to local sources, some of the felled timber is to be transported to military bases and used there as fuel. The rest will be sold on to other provinces for commercial purposes. Environmental groups have been calling for an end to systematic deforestation in the Kurdish mountain regions for years. They criticize the fact that, under the pretext of “security interests,” massive interventions are being carried out in sensitive ecosystems—without public oversight, transparent approval procedures, or ecological impact assessments.
Village guards
Village guards are Kurdish paramilitaries in the service of the Turkish state. The village guard system was established in Turkey in 1985 to combat the Kurdish liberation movement and has its roots in the Hamidiye Regiments in the Ottoman Empire. The paramilitary units, founded according to tried and tested colonial methods, are now officially called the “Security Guard” and are used as local experts and cannon fodder in Turkish military operations in Kurdistan. Their mission also includes foreign missions.