"Locals vow to keep fighting to save a forest in southwest Turkey after the chainsaws finish work"

...Campaigners fighting to protect woodlands earmarked for coal-mining in southwest Turkey... pledged to maintain their fight as tree-felling came to an end.

Locals have held a four-year vigil in Akbelen forest to hold off logging that paves the way for a lignite mine near the village of Ikizkoy in Mugla province.

Chainsaw teams that arrived to start felling trees...

“They massacred our forest,” ... Nejla Isik, from the Ikizkoy Environment Committee, said ... “They destroyed our trees, which we have been protecting for four years, in eight days..."

The protest at Akbelen is the latest stand-off in Turkey between environmentalists and developers uprooting green areas for mines, quarries and other projects.

Some 40 people were detained during the protests...

Protestors posted videos on social media showing the police using water cannons and pepper spray to prevent people entering the area.

The 740,000 square meter (183 acre) forest has been cleared to mine lignite, an inefficient fuel commonly known as brown coal, for two nearby thermal power plants run by IC Ictas Energy and Limak Energy, companies with close ties to the government.

Turkish rights groups described the battle to protect the forest as a “struggle against Turkey’s violation of its environmental obligations” under the United Nations Convention on Climate Change and the 2016 Paris Agreement.

“The attack on Akbelen forest is a severe intervention in the right of the local people … to live in a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment”