The wildfires raging across Turkey’s Mediterranean and Aegean coasts have given rise to a massive public outcry that might prove a critical juncture in Turkish politics as criticism over Ankara’s failure to efficiently tackle the crisis has been moving toward an existentially threatening level for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

The disaster, which has seen dozens of fires engulf pine forests, agricultural land and residential areas since last week, caught the government badly unprepared, with officials forced to admit that Ankara lacks a single firefighting plane of its own. Despite its claim of having a strong state apparatus, Erdogan’s three-year executive presidency appears stuck in a management crisis. And instead of focusing on improving its response to desperate calls for help from affected areas, the government has been trying to politicize the disaster to provide a smokescreen against its own inadequacy.

The broadsides of opposition parties aside, people’s criticism of the government’s conduct has grown bolder, blunter and more organized despite the country’s increasingly repressive climate, where even a critical tweet can land someone in jail. 

The criticism of the government focuses on the lack of proper measures and precautions despite obvious climatic risks; this has thrown Ankara’s lavish spending on presidential palaces, aircraft and other luxury items into sharper relief. Strikingly, the disaster laid bare how Turkey had been left without any working firefighting planes of its own and had to lease foreign ones as its existing aircraft lie idle, grounded by lack of maintenance. The government has come under fire also for failing to coordinate the response with the local administrations of affected regions, which are held mostly by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), and for its refusal to accept some foreign offers of help, particularly from Turkey’s regional rival Greece, in a bid to preserve an image of strength and prowess.