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Military

True Or False? Rapid Deforestation In Iraq By Turkey’s Military

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Vertical 52 (Real) Stories From Space

Dear Siloites, the 31st United Nations climate conference (COP31) kicked off this week with accusations of rapid deforestation by Turkey’s military. Our analysis cuts through the noise. Yours, Luis Beyerbach and Marcus Pfeil.
Accusations of environmental harm against Turkish Armed Forces resurface as the country hosts COP31
Hundreds of hectares of forests in Kurdish districts of Northern Iraq have been cleared to build Turkish military outposts. Vertical52 has analysed multiple sites to reconstruct the deforestation.
Google Earth satellite image showing a freshly deforested location of a future military outpost in July 2023.
In the weeks leading up to the climate conference in Turkey, videos on social media claimed widespread forest felling by Turkish troops in Kurdish districts of Northern Iraq. The videos showed long piles of logs and trucks transporting them away. Some users claimed the Turkish military enabled illegal commercial deforestation in the regions. Vertical52 found no evidence of commercial forest clearing. We instead found multiple locations where Turkish troops felled trees in Northern Iraq to construct military outposts. Our analysis shows how Turkish Armed Forces bases and the roads leading to them have cleared vegetation and cut into the wooded mountains of Iraq’s Kurdish regions.

Turkey’s decades-long war with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), deemed a terrorist organisation by the EU and US, killed an estimated 40,000 people and has spilled across the country’s borders. With some PKK fighters based in the mountains of Northern Iraq, Turkey’s military has justified moving far into the Kurdish regions of its neighbouring country.
Since 2018, Turkish troops have established a controlling presence in the Iraqi mountains. While military outposts were mostly built slowly throughout the 40 years of conflict, Turkey ramped up its campaign in recent years. The BBC reported in 2025 (see video below at end of this post) that at least 136 troop bases have been built in the Turkish-controlled zones – most of them built after 2018. Their impact on the environment is still not fully known.
Google Earth satellite imagery showing the construction of a future military outpost in July 2023. A convoy of vehicles, seemingly part of the Turkish Armed Forces, is captured next to a group of people on the grounds of a helipad.
A report published in October by the portal The National Context quantified forest loss caused by the Turkish military. It analysed changes in vegetation in Kurdish districts in the past 25 years. It concludes: “Woodland loss around Turkish roads and outposts is real, has roughly doubled since before the Claw operations.” According to the report, the Kurdish districts have lost at least 3,600 hectares of forest over the past decade. The platform attributes at least 2,000 hectares of this loss to military operations. This aligns with our analysis of dozens of military outposts.
Roads carve through the mountains

The Kurdish region North of Amediye before a road connecting military outposts was built. Source: Google Earth, September 2022.
North of the Iraqi city Amediye, a road connecting Turkish Armed Forces bases is documented in satellite images from Google Earth and Sentinel. The road, which runs south through wooded mountains, was completed in 2023.
Image showing roads connecting military outposts in the Kurdish region North of Amediye. Source: Google Earth, July 2023.
At that point, the military bases had not yet been built, as high-resolution satellite images show. A close-up of the location offers a glimpse of how the Turkish Armed Forces are constructing outposts. Once a road reaches the target area, the felling begins.

Close-up of the forest in the Kurdish region North of Amediye before a Turkish military outpost was built. Source: Google Earth, September 2022.
Once the forest is cleared, the ground often shows bulldozer scars and tyre tracks, as documented in outpost constructions in other war zones.

Close-up of the cleared forest areas in the Kurdish region North of Amediye before a Turkish military outpost was built. Source: Google Earth, July 2023.

The most recent high-resolution close-up image of a small military outpost in the Kurdish region North of Amediye. The image shows multiple storage and construction units and a helipad next to the road crossing. Source: Planet Labs, 15 January 2025.
Construction begins and often finishes quickly: just a few barracks, storage units, and a helipad to reach the location faster than via the mountain roads. Almost three hectares of forest were cleared for this outpost.
While many of the 136 military bases were built on bare land, others required far more deforestation to become accessible. This pattern can be documented throughout Northern Iraq, where Turkey has positioned its troops to control an area contested by the PKK.
What happens to the locations if Turkey withdraws?
This week, Turkey and Iraq have reached an agreement that could potentially stabilise their border region. Turkey has agreed to begin withdrawing its troops from several military outposts on its neighbour’s territory. Turkish intelligence reported that the PKK had left four camps in early October as the group disbands.
The current deal between the governments does not cover the positions in Iraq’s Duhok province – where many of Turkey’s bases are located. Turkish troops moved in where the PKK left border positions earlier this year, Turkish Minute reported. It remains unclear whether the outposts and their roads will be dismantled.
After 40 years of war, some PKK affiliates and sympathisers accuse Turkey of committing ecocide in Iraq and Syria. In Northern Iraq, Vertical52 did not find any evidence for large-scale commercial logging with currently available satellite imagery. The most recently reported logging could not yet be verified, as high-resolution images of the region remain scarce.
The claims made in videos posted on social media shortly before the start of COP31 could be partially verified. Satellite images show environmental destruction mostly in the context of military expansion.
Reach Out
While COP31 is underway, we are investigating different angles of environmental harm. For this story, we mapped out parts of Turkey’s military infrastructure to verify deforestation claims from both parties. Reach out if you want to dive deeper into this story or have another investigation in mind that could use analysis and data from above. We are always happy to help.
Earth

Beach Raking Threatens Habitat- Help Protect Wasaga’s Piping Plover

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Did you know that the majority of Ontario Wasaga beaches are no longer protected, including critical piping plover habitat? That’s because the Ontario government recently removed Wasaga’s beaches from the Provincial Park and are giving them to the municipality despite fierce opposition from Ontarians, including many of you.

Wasaga’s beaches are the birthplace of 70 percent of all Ontario-fledged piping plovers that have survived to adulthood since the species returned to Ontario in 2007. This irreplaceable habitat is now at immediate risk from destructive mechanical beach and sand dune raking planned by the Town Council for as soon as this spring.

Emergency Order

Although Wasaga’s beaches are no longer in a Provincial Park, there is still a way to protect the piping plover. The Federal government can and should issue an Emergency Order under the Species at Risk Act to protect this endangered shorebird from the destruction of the places where it eats and raises its young.

While this solution seems obvious, ensuring the Federal government does the right thing is not guaranteed. That’s why we urgently need your help. We want to launch a comprehensive public awareness campaign to mobilize Ontarians to push the federal government to fulfill its responsibility and protect Wasaga’s critical piping plover habitat. Will you help us?

Mechanical Raking Of Beaches

Time is running out. The Town of Wasaga Beach has already purchased mechanical raking equipment and announced a development plan that would bring beach clearing and raking to known piping plover nesting and feeding sites.

Mechanical beach raking destroys the natural debris piping plovers need to nest, forage, and hide from predators. Evidence from other Ontario beaches shows that once raking occurs, plovers often fail to return. With only three other active breeding sites left in Ontario, the loss of Wasaga would be catastrophic.

Environmental Defence has successfully fought and saved the homes of this bird before. After years of advocacy, we stopped the illegal bulldozing of piping plover habitat at Saugeen Beach (formerly known as Sauble Beach), and we will use our experience to fight the habitat destruction now threatening Wasaga. We know that only the immediate action of the federal government stands between the loss and the survival of the endangered piping plover on Wasaga’s beaches. The time for action is now.

Tourism Balance Can Be Established

The Town of Wasaga Beach is, and can continue to be, both a thriving home for endangered piping plovers and a world-class tourism destination. Together, we must demand that the federal government issue an Emergency Act under the Species at Risk Act and prevent the irreversible loss of Wasaga’s piping plover habitat. We hope we can count on your support by clicking here.

For the Silo, Tim Gray.

Earth

Farmer Explains The Increase In Storms

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The Mechanics of World Weather Storm Systems 

A lot has been said, lately, about the increased activity and severity of storm systems around the World in the last 30 years.. Most will tell you it is because of the increased amount of  Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, some would even hazard the aberrations are caused by deities seeking retribution for our collective sins…

But the truth is, the balance maintained for millions of years in the weather patterns of this planet have been dented, impacted, and thrown off kilter by our own change of tastes.. The larger homes of today’s tastes often include “Exotic Hardwood” floors from non-domestic species imported from third World countries, just trying to make a dime from their only primary crop,.. timber..  Another reason for the felling of trees was to create farmland for the Third World’s bulging populations.. This has led to the clear-cutting of massive stands of Equatorial Forests on the order of hundreds of square miles, of of these massive trees, at a time..

One must consider the impact of this act.. The average large tree, in North America, has the cooling effect of 15 room-size air conditioners… The average large tree in the Amazon or Indonesian Archipelago can has the cooling effect of 100 or more air conditioners…

To demonstrate the physics, 1 pound of water, heated to increase the temperature one degree Fahrenheit, would take 1 BTU of energy… This is an even measurement throughout the change from a solid (ice) to a gas (steam), or, 212 degrees, Fahrenheit, OR, 180 BTU.. The amount of energy necessary to change the state of that 1 pound of water to steam, is 965 BTU… If you can imagine that an average North American tree can evaporate 30 gallons of water, an hour, or, remove 231,600 BTU’s per hour of heat energy from the atmosphere, and, an an average Equatorial Forest tree can remove as much as 180 gallons of water per hour, or, 1,389,600 BTU per hour.., THEN, you can imagine the effect of the removal of a Million of these trees on the stability of the moderation in the balancing of storm systems that these important Equatorial Forests have…

The loss of this amount of Equatorial Forest has had a devastating affect on the World’s weather systems over the last 25 years

Storms, particularly in Europe and the U.S., have been dramatically more severe… One never, ever, heard of a thunderstorm in Europe, some 30 years ago, packing winds of up to 125 miles per hour.. Now, they are almost a common occurrence.. One storm, in the South of France, in the Autumn of 1997, destroyed a forest of ancient oak and ash trees that were planted by workers under the auspices of King Louis the thirteenth..

Though a large part of the felled trees were salvaged by sawyers cutting board stock out of the logs, the forest was destroyed, and, only lately replanting efforts have made an impact on the landscape…

“WE are known by our acts, but suffer, our choices..”

For the Silo, Bill Stewart.