Belek, a resort area on the southern coast of Turkey, has apparently felled a forest for a golf course.  The region was declared a tourist zone in 1990 and had the densest forests in the Antalya region but has suffered deforestation recently due to a golf boom. 

The Turkist Nature Preservation Association (TTKD) revealed two photographs taken in 2005 and 2007 which show the extent of the destruction of the forests in Belek. 

Turkey's Sabah newspaper has reported that that trees were planted in the 1960s: "The Belek Muhafaza Forest, which was developed over 30 years, was opened to tourism in the 1990s. Since then, 45 hotels and six golf courses have already been built, while plans for more golf courses are next."  The report also added that the Belek forest started to disappear after the allocations made to the tourism industry by the Ministry of Tourism and Culture.

Hediye Gunduz, Regional Director of TTKD pointed out that the region once possessed the best forests in the Antalya region as a result of the intense deforestation efforts in the 1990s and said that this changed once the Tourism Ministry started to focus on the region’s tourism potential after 1984, when the building boom started.

She said that people involved in the destruction of the forests found a legal umbrella to hide under once the region became a tourism zone.

“There used to be between 600,000 and 700,000 trees there. They have cut down 500,000 of them,” said Gunduz.

She added, “The coastal regions of the forests are breeding grounds for Caretta caretta sea turtles and the vegetation is important for migrating birds that come to the region.” She also said that 109 different kinds of endangered bird species lived in the Belek forests.

Gunduz blamed the policies adopted by the Tourism Ministry over the years for the destruction of the forests in Belek and also accused the local Kadriye and Belek municipalities of failing to protest the interests of the people.  THE END.