Turkey’s deadly fires raise the heat for Erdogan

​By a Staff Reporter: The fires crept up the hills, scattered and grew, helped by the wind, and raced down towards the shore. In some places, desperate locals rushed to the sea, filling up plastic buckets with water to ward off the flames approaching their homes. Others ran or drove for their lives. The sky turned grey, then orange. By the time the smoke had cleared, stretches of Turkey’s coastal paradise, once covered in pine forests and olive trees, were in ashes.