Show/Hide Menu
Hide/Show Apps
Logout
Türkçe
Türkçe
Search
Search
Login
Login
OpenMETU
OpenMETU
About
About
Open Science Policy
Open Science Policy
Open Access Guideline
Open Access Guideline
Postgraduate Thesis Guideline
Postgraduate Thesis Guideline
Communities & Collections
Communities & Collections
Help
Help
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Guides
Guides
Thesis submission
Thesis submission
MS without thesis term project submission
MS without thesis term project submission
Publication submission with DOI
Publication submission with DOI
Publication submission
Publication submission
Supporting Information
Supporting Information
General Information
General Information
Copyright, Embargo and License
Copyright, Embargo and License
Contact us
Contact us
Fire burns where it falls: A vernacular security approach to 2021 forest fires in Turkey
Download
10591298.pdf
Muhammed Onur Çöpoğlu - İmza Sayfası ve Beyan.pdf
Date
2025-5
Author
Çöpoğlu, Muhammed Onur
Metadata
Show full item record
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
.
Item Usage Stats
105
views
0
downloads
Cite This
In the summer of 2021, Turkey faced the most severe forest fires in its history. The issue went beyond an “environmental” crisis as it led to the deforestation of a large area and turned into a “political crisis” between the government and the people, as well as a “security crisis” as 8 people lost their lives, thousands were left homeless, and the ecosystem was endangered. This thesis explores how those fires came to be understood not just as an environmental catastrophe, but also as a complex security problem. Adopting “vernacular” security approach from the field of critical security studies, this thesis compares the official government narrative on the fires with how local communities themselves perceived and talked about them. The thesis draws on official speeches, policy documents, and press releases for the official (elite) narrative, while semi-structured interviews with local people and forest villagers in the fire-affected districts capture the vernacular narrative on the issue. Building on qualitative content analysis via MAXQDA, the thesis highlights a disconnect between the official and the vernacular narratives on the same phenomenon. In conclusion, the thesis confirms the vernacular security approach emphasising that security is not a homogenous concept and reveals the potential of forest villagers as security providers during the 2021 forest fires in Turkey, thereby providing an empirical example of community-based indigenous fire management practices.
Subject Keywords
Vernacular security
,
Indigenous fire management
,
Critical security studies
,
Environmental security
,
2021 forest fires
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/114640
Collections
Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis
Citation Formats
IEEE
ACM
APA
CHICAGO
MLA
BibTeX
M. O. Çöpoğlu, “Fire burns where it falls: A vernacular security approach to 2021 forest fires in Turkey,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2025.