Why are they destroying Akbelen Forest?

We are in the steppe, the grey colour of the steppe.

Do you know what grey is?

It's a cloudy, grey or brownish colour.

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They say that they have grey hair, but grey is actually a colour, the colour of rock and desert.

Both grey and moor, steppe.

We once lived in the steppe!

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In the past, the steppe was also called bor, borlağ, bozlak. It meant a barren field that had not been ploughed.

Today, a kind of long air sung in many regions of Central and Southern Anatolia is called bozlak.

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"He rode on a grey horse and made an oplayı tegdi"

In other words, he rode his grey horse and attacked.

That's what it says in the Orkhon inscriptions. 

The inscriptions from 735 are Orkhon inscriptions. 

It mentions Tadık Çor.

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The battle of Ming Sha was fought on 17 January 707 between the Gokturk Army under the command of Kapgan Khan and the Tang army under the command of Çaça Sengün.

During the battles, Kül Tigin first attacked the Chinese by riding Tadık Çor's grey horse, then İşbara Yamtar's grey horse, then Yiğen Siliğ Bey's dressed bay horses, but all of the horses died. They shot Kül Tigin with more than a hundred arrows from his armour and robe, but the arrows did not touch Kül Tigin's face and head.

Isn't it beautiful?

Our ancestors made a note in history. 

They engraved a war on the rocks with details.

The colours of the horses attracted my attention.

Tadık Çor's grey horse.

Isbara Yamtar's grey horse.

Yiğen Siliğ Bey's dressed bay horses.

Does anyone know what a bay horse is? 

What colour is it?

Red!

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Unfortunately, we know very little about horses today.

However, once upon a time, horses, horsewomen and weapons came to mind when it came to Turks.

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What did we say? We're in the steppe!

A vast grassy plain is a steppe.

It's not a forest.

However, Turks must have lived in forested areas as well.

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Do you know which tree names exist in our beautiful language Turkish?

For example, today the mountains are covered with pine trees.

Do you think pine tree is a Turkish tree name?

There are white, black, red, pistachio.

What do you think?

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"Pine" is an Arabic word!

When I think of Arabs, I think of the desert. What's a pine tree doing in the desert?

How did the pine tree come into our language from Arabic?

Interesting! Isn't it?

I don't know why, but pine really comes from the Arabic root word "sham". 

It literally means wax, resin!

What sugar of Damascus! Neither the face of an Arab!

Isn't the Umayyad mosque in Damascus very famous?

In 24 hours we will be praying in the Umayyad mosque, someone once said.

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Okay, let's move on.

I don't know if there are so many oak forests left now.

When I was little, the house in Izmit was heated with a stove, we used to buy two tonnes of oak wood. Of course, we would also buy coal.

There were oak forests everywhere. They cut down the forests

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Could oak be Turkish?

I'm afraid not.

Oak is also a Persian word. It means "bush, wild place, forest" in Persian.

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Then we have huge plane trees in some of our cities! How about a plane tree?

The railway used to pass through the middle of Izmit. To the right and left of the railway, there were huge plane trees along the street.

It has been a long time, now the railway does not pass through the city. 

But the sycamores were there the last time I was there. 

I guess they are still there.

Can plane trees be Turkish?

I'm afraid not.

Sycamore is also Persian.

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I don't understand, there are many trees, fir for example! 

Fir is not Turkish either?

No, fir is not Turkish either.

We got fir from Greek too!

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Hornbeam?

Look, it is written in the dictionary that the origin of hornbeam is not clear.

Armenian garbeni, Greek gábros, Latin carpinus. So it may have come from one of these languages. 

I think the Armenian is very similar, we may have got this word from Armenians.

On the other hand, hornbeam is also known as "the fairy tale creature that opens the earth and eats the dead" in Turkish.

I wonder where we got this fairy tale hero from?

Maybe this name was inspired by the fairy tale hero.

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I'm bored!

There are so many tree species!

Now I find it strange that there are no trees with Turkish names among them.

The fact that we come from a steppe culture can't affect the language that much!

Or does it?

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Yes, don't worry, there are many tree species growing in our country and naturally there are trees with Turkish names among them.

In other words, just because we come from the steppe culture, we were not aware of trees at all.

How beautifully Nazım Hikmet wrote his famous poem, right?

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In the snowy beech forest

I walk in the night

I'm sad, I'm sad

Give me your hand, where is it?

The country or the stars

Is my youth more distant?

Among the beeches

A window, warm yellow

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Yes, the beech tree!

The beech tree is the most important symbol of Turkish mythology. It is believed to contain God's blessing. Therefore, Turks find refreshment, relax and purify where the beech tree is located. It is believed that prayers, when made near the beech tree, reach God faster and are accepted more quickly.

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Is there any other tree with a Turkish name?

There is also juniper. (In some regions it is also called porsuk, borsuk, again from the word boz!)

Old Turkish artuç means "a kind of dwarf conifer tree, juniperus".

There are nine centuries old juniper trees in Anatolia.

They are monumental trees.

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Another tree with a Turkish name is sığla tree.

Old Turkish suvlağ means "watery place, swamp". This word derives from Old Turkish suv "water".

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We also have a spindle tree.

"yiğde" as it appears in Divan-i Lugati't-Türk, the famous Turkish dictionary of Kashgarli Mahmut, dating from 1073.

I like to eat spindle, it has a bit bitter taste, hairy hairy, but after a while your mouth sweetens.

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There's also the hedgehog!

The name of this tree evolved from the word Çıtlamuk or çıtlağuk "hazelnut, kernel".

It comes from the verb crack- or snap-. Crack or snap is derived from words that we call sound-reflexive.

The kernel comes from the same root, to crack, to make a cracking sound!

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Look, there's a willow.

You know, the tree where the water buffalo nests.

It also has a wisteria, wisteria willow.

When we were little, we used to make whistles from its branches.

You hit the fresh willow branch you cut slowly with the handle of a penknife, and the bark comes off immediately. Then you shape it by hollowing out the stick inside with a penknife. 

The last step is to put the bark in place and make the necessary hole in it. After that, blow as much as you can, each one has a different sound, because the thickness of each branch is different, each one is a different handicraft.

What to do, when we were little, there was no Nasreddin hodja in our neighbourhood to go to the bazaar and bring us whistles. 

Anyway, he brought whistles to those who paid for them.

We were making our own whistles.

Yes, we all had a pocket knife with us. Small, folding type. For some reason, nobody had a switchblade penknife.

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In fact, willow means any kind of tree. It comes from the Old Turkish verb söğül, meaning "to burn".

When we say söğüş, it actually means söğülmüş, which means cooked, burnt, fried on fire.

Today, we often call coarsely chopped vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers as söğüş for breakfast.

However, cold cuts actually means cooked!

Where is the language evolving from here to where, isn't it?

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What else? Are there any other tree names in Turkish?

I think we can also count "akağaç" among forest trees. It is also called maple, but it is also Turkish.

It is also very common in Russia (its Russian name is berioza!).

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I think Kızılağaç can also be counted among Turkish tree names.

Red, the colour of blood!

Red.

We also call it red. 

However, "red" came into our language from Arabic.

Why do we use "red" when we have the original Turkish?

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There's white, red and black, right?

Of course, there is also elm. 

There are elm forests especially in our Black Sea region.

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I think there's an ash.

Ash! A tree with straight or even branches.

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Of course, among fruit trees, apple and pear are also Turkish tree names. Cranberry is also Turkish.

I wonder if cranberry is considered a fruit? 

Or is it a berry? You know, there are also nuts.

In Russian, the first thing children are taught at school is that watermelon and melon are not fruits, but nuts.

In our language, they might be categorised as fruit. Look, I'm not so sure.

Of course, fruit trees are very diverse, maybe it is necessary to examine them separately in another article.

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The rest are unfortunately trees whose names have entered our language from other languages.

* Pine, Arabic

* Cedar, Arabic

* Cypress, (cypress) Arabic

* Laden, Arabic

* Mulberry, Arabic 

* Lemon, Arabic

* Walnut, Arabic

* Hazelnut, Arabic

* Peanut, Arabic

* Olive, Arabic

* Fir (fir), Greek

* Eucalyptus, Greek 

* Ebony, Greek

* Linden, Greek

* Chestnut, Greek

* Cherry, Greek

* Oak, Persian

* Sycamore, Persian 

* Poplar, Persian 

* Birch, Persian 

* Persimmon, Persian

* Pomegranate, Persian 

* Fig, Persian 

* Boxwood, Persian

* Turunc, Persian

* Pelesenk, Persian 

* Redbud, Persian

* Rosewood, Persian 

(There is also a huge tree called rosewood!)

* Acacia, French

* Maun, French

* Teak, French

* Tangerine, French

There are many more tree names of African origin, probably from African indigenous languages.

There are also fruit tree names, such as grapefruit, from English.

There are also Portuguese tree names like orange. 

Cherry, for example, is from Bulgarian.

Or, as I wrote above, there is also hornbeam. Tree name of unknown origin.

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There are at least 73,274 tree species in the world.

How did they arrive at such a precise number?

The Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative (GFBI) database is the global repository that holds the most information about trees around the world to date.

The researchers reached this number by combining this data with data from Project TREECHANGE, the second largest database.

Although many of these are trees from the same family, it is also a proof that there are actually quite a lot of tree species in the world. 

I can say that I was surprised.

I didn't even know there were so many Turkish tree names until I started writing this article. I knew beech and juniper, but look, there are many more Turkish tree names.

Still, I think it is very few. We have not been so familiar with trees.

After all, we come from the steppes.

Our life was spent on horseback, as a nomadic life in otags.

Today, many of our brothers and sisters, the Kyrgyz, still live a steppe life.

There are regions in Kazakhstan where a similar life is lived.

So it seems normal to me that we do not have a tree or forest culture.

But on the other hand, this situation causes us to have no love for forests.

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Since today is Sunday, I usually take care to write special articles for Sunday calmness.

However, while starting this article, I had in mind the Ak Belen forest, which we slaughtered with our hands.

I thought I would take a journey to find an answer to why our love for forests is so weak.

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Yes, we do not know the value of our forests, because forest life is a bit alien to us.

If we knew the value of forests, we would not be able to cut forests so easily.

What is being done is not cutting trees in the forest, it is slaughtering the forest.

Forests also require maintenance and logging can and should be done regularly in forests.

But what happened in Akbelen is a massacre!

Is it only Akbelen?

Of course not, but at the moment the reactions are concentrated on Akbelen.

As a society, we are a society without forest awareness.

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Moreover, on the one hand, while someone is slaughtering the forest, on the other hand, the sons of the motherland, our beloved gendarmerie can spray pepper spray on people without mercy.

Can you imagine?

The citizens who want to protect the forest are pepper sprayed by the gendarmerie, who are also the sons of this homeland!

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OK, they were given a duty, they had to be there. 

But I don't know, I guess I wouldn't have been able to use that pepper spray in people's faces. 

I probably couldn't do such a thing.

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Then, if we were more sensitive about forests as a country, I think one person would have hugged each tree by now, and I think those who committed this atrocity would not have been able to touch those trees.

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Then what do you say to the employees of the company that did this massacre?

I understand, it's bread and butter.

But I don't know, I guess I wouldn't have been able to cut down those trees, even if it was for a living. 

I think I would have resigned to ruin his business, I couldn't cut down that tree.

I don't know, maybe I'm thinking wrong.

Still, I guess I couldn't do this evil.

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I have one last word on this subject!

My word to Mr Kılıçdaroğlu!

Look how people are pushing you, aren't they, Mr Kılıçdaroğlu!

Is it possible to be the leader of the opposition just by coming here and saying we are with you cursorily? 

If you are the leader of the opposition, you will also hug a tree!

You too will smell the smell of that pepper spray. Your eyes will burn together with the citizens!

Even if you don't want to do this, these people will teach you how to be a proper opposition! 

They'll teach you gladly! Or you will gladly learn!

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It may be too late now, most of the forest has already been cut down, but our hearts are always in Akbelen, always with you nature lovers who are trying to protect the remaining trees!

With love and respect to everyone from Moscow