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. |
