President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will chair Monday’s meeting of the Cabinet, which will discuss a range of issues affecting Türkiye and the region.
Wildfires that spread across Türkiye amid unusual temperatures will likely dominate the discussions. The terror-free Türkiye initiative will also be discussed at the meeting, according to media reports on Sunday. Additionally, the ministers are expected to discuss Israel’s “tactical pause” in Gaza, where the death toll from Israeli attacks has neared 60,000 since October 2023.
At the meeting, ministers will share details about a week of wildfires across the country that are still underway in some provinces, as well as how the government responded to them. Wildfires are at their worst in years for the country due to their sheer number, as a scorching heat wave has gripped Türkiye since mid-July. As of Sunday, firefighters and volunteers have been battling dozens of fires from west to the south, while Agriculture and Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumaklı said on Sunday that they worked to contain 84 blazes in just one day on Saturday.
Another important topic for the Cabinet is the disarmament of the PKK terrorist group as part of the terror-free Türkiye initiative launched last year by government ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). This will be the first Cabinet meeting before a parliamentary committee set up to tackle the initiative will start work later this week. The Cabinet will assess the stage of the initiative in the wake of the first act of disarmament by the PKK earlier this month in northern Iraq.
The Cabinet will also discuss the latest developments in Gaza after Israel declared a “tactical pause” to its attacks on the Palestinian enclave amid international pressure and the beginning of a limited aid flow for Palestinians left starving by the Israeli aggression. Türkiye is a major critic of what it calls Israel’s genocide targeting Palestinians and has long sought to deliver aid to desperate Gazans, although Israel's blockade has hampered the efforts.
