There are important figures for every concept in this world. Some countries are lucky enough to have certain people that advances them in these concepts. I believe natural awareness is one of these concepts. There are certain people in every country who was able to make their people understand, through their actions, how important the nature is for us. In this article of mine I would like to introduce you all to two people who changed the public?s opinion of nature and its importance favorably in Turkey.

                 First person that I will be mentioning is someone from the present. His name is Hayrettin Karaca. He was born in 1926. Although, he spent most of his lifetime continuing his parents? job due to the pressure from his parents, after the age of 60 he decided pursue his dream of contributing to conserving nature. He has two big accomplishments in his lifetime that affected Turkey in many ways. First of all, he built the first private and the second arboretum of Turkey in Yalova. An arboretum, by the way, is a place where trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants are cultivated for scientific and educational purposes. Hayrettin Karaca spent a lot of time to build this arboretum and traveled all around the world collecting the seeds of different plants?. Today there are 14,000 different species of plant in the arboretum including the ones that are endangered in Turkey. Now the funny thing about the number of plant species is that there in total 11,000 species of plants in Turkey. However, Hayrettin Karaca did not want his arboretum to only contain the plant species of Turkey, but the plant species of the world which made us learn not to only think of our country but the nature of the world as a whole. Secondly, as I have also mentioned before he was one of the two founders of the foundation of TEMA. He founded TEMA at the age of 66 and contributed to the restoration of forests as well as the afforestation in a tremendous way to the point that the foundation planted millions of threes, did hundreds of projects and raised children?s awareness about the topic. Hayrettin Karaca also received five honorary doctorates from universities, many rewards both nationally and internationally. One remarkable and perhaps recent reward received by him is the declaration of himself as the ?Forest Hero? by the UN out of 46 other candidates from 30 different countries in 2013.

               Other person which I am about to tell you is also the founder of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. After saving the country from the invaders and declaring the independence of Turkey, he did not stop showing us how to become better in many ways such as caring for nature. There are two reasons for my thinking. One is the fact that despite all of the agriculturists claimed that the soil of Ankara could never been a place where trees and other plants would be able to grow, Atatürk never gave up on his dream of having a green and beautiful capital city of Turkey. And if we see any kind of tree or plant today in Ankara it is thanks to Atatürk never giving up on the soil. This thought us that sometimes nature can be unpredictable in a good way. He also built Atatürk Forest Farm which is technically a forest, Youth Park, Hippodrome and made the streets of Ankara green. Also, there is a story which is well known in the country about Atatürk and a tree: Just as Atatürk was going to his farm in Yalova, he told his driver to stop as he saw a huge tree about to cut down. He asked the man who was about to cut the tree why he would do such a thing. The man answered that the tree was in the way of the mansion and needed to be cut. Atatürk later said that the tree will not be cut but rather the mansion would be moved away from the tree. Now, this two examples explain Atatürk?s love for nature, yet form an objective point of view he did not do much of a thing to protect the wild. He only stopped a tree from being cut, and planted some tree in a city. Compared to what TEMA did, it is not that much of thing, so why did I mention all of this? The reason is simple. Because, without Atatürk TEMA may not even be founded. Atatürk right after the independence was like the role model of Turkey. And just the story about him and the moving mansion was enough to make the citizens of Turkey realize the importance of nature. In other words, Atatürk was the first environmentalist of the Republic of Turkey who encouraged a whole nation to care about green land.

               Consequently, Atatürk started the idea that nature was important, and I believe that Hayrettin Karaca with the foundation of TEMA is where we have come as a nation learning that every land is important with the leading of that first idea. I hope that I can be of use to conserve and restore not only my country but also the world as a whole.  

The first two pictures belong to Atatürk while the last picture is Hayrettin Karaca hugging a tree.