Nature protection

The first national park was established in Turkey in 1958 r., and since then their number has increased to 21. Often they were founded because of archaeological excavations or the already existing historically important places. This, in turn, favored the development of fauna and flora. For example, the National Park at Mount Olimp, not far from Antalya, it boasts an abundance of vegetation and numerous species of animals, and it was founded because the ancient cities of Phaselis and Olimpos were situated there. Koprulu National Park Authority (west of Antalya) they boast of evergreen cypress (Cupressus sempervirens). And there would be nothing extraordinary about it, after all, such cypresses are found throughout southern Europe, if not for the fact, that if in Europe or elsewhere in the world these are singly growing pieces, so much in the vicinity of the Koprulu canyon the whole forest grows these cypresses (supposedly the only one in the world).

The distribution of parks in Turkey is as follows: Mediterranean zone – 6, central Anatolia – 5, around the Sea of ​​Marmara – 3, Black Sea zone – 3, Aegean coast – 2. The area of ​​national parks in Turkey varies between 65 ha (Park Kuscenetti) a 69 thousand. ha (Olympus). Most of them are forested, but some also include the waterless steppes of Anatolia (np. Baskomutan or Goreme).

Apart from national parks, there are special nature care zones in Turkey (ok. 20), that is simply nature protection zones, focusing forest areas or, for example,. lake with surroundings. These zones range in size from several dozen (86) to several thousand (17 200) hectares, and their overall area exceeds 50 thousand. ha.

They are usually smaller than national parks, which allows for better protection, because they are easier to control. In addition, the Turkish government has recently also taken more care of the animal world. Has been designated over 40 usually small special protection zones, where representatives of unique species of fauna live, threatened with extinction.

On the other hand, ecology is a serious problem in Turkey. The Turks generally do not know. why glass is collected or segregated separately, plastic or metal. The province is particularly backward in this respect. It is common to litter the area with everything, which is just not suitable for fuel. In trains, plastic and glass bottles are thrown out of the window without embarrassment, somewhere in the steppes of central Anatolia, where there is no slightest chance, for someone to pick it up. What to say about the steppes, just look into the nooks and crannies of a bigger city, where the liquefaction of waste is a serious problem.

History of garbage

The trash problem in Turkey has been around for a long time, a w XIX w. it was a plague, which was noticed by many Polish travelers of that time. Even such a spiritual man as Adam Mickiewicz did not fail to write in one of his letters to Mrs. Chlustin: For example, imagine a public square covered with a layer of dung and feathers, on which the chickens strolled leisurely, turkeys and all kinds of animals among the groups of dogs resting… Anyway, I sneak through these passages only once a day, among the buy, dead rats, killed cats, drunk to death the English and Turkish porters. For Mickiewicz, Turkish customs reminded a bit of Poland: I was told, that in Smyrna (Izmir today – W. K.) Homer's Grotto is to be, but I am not curious about it. I was looking at something else here: there was a pile of dung and rubbish, all the remains together, dung, garbage, slop, bones, broken skulls, a piece of the sole of an old slipper, feathers a little – I liked it. I stood there for a long time, because it was completely there, like in front of an inn in Poland – he told his friends after returning to Istanbul. The Turks then developed an original way of cleaning up the waste. Mr. Ignacy Hołowiński, religious writer and translator of Shakespeare, later metropolitan of Mogilev, he left us the following account of it, writing about the great problem of homeless dogs in Turkey: they purify the city, understood without sweeping, but eating all the waste and dirt, which they throw on the streets here. Dogs would do this as a gratitude for it, that the Turks gave them bowls of water and sometimes fed them. W 1854 r. Jadwiga Zamoyska née Działyńska undertook a trip to Turkey, area gen. Władysław Zamoyski, which also drew attention to the issue of disposal: In Istanbul, no one was sweeping the streets, except dogs. There was a lot of rubbish on every street, all the garbage on, kitchen waste, etc.. they were throwing, and on this pile of trash a bunch of dogs, who defended her treatment room like a citadel. Istanbul's dogs lived, they were born and died in the streets, nobody cared for them and nobody bothered them… But when he remembers, that in Istanbul no one is sweeping the streets… There was a lot of appreciation for the favor given by dogs, that cleared it all away. An equally sad picture was presented by the novelist and democratic activist in exile Zygmunt Miłkowski, which approx. year 1850 visited Smyrna: In this commercial metropolis, the East presents itself in all its filth and stench of splendor. The port of ships clogged the nozzles with the smell of rot, The narrow streets are filled with garbage with the debris of decaying organic bodies mixed up. In Istanbul, too, people are trampled on "rubbish and rot”.

As Miłkowski rightly noted, the problem of untidy garbage lies in the word East; this can be interpreted as a mental brake. This is already the case in most Arabs, Far East countries (but also in Eastern Europe), that hardly anyone there worries about the threat to the natural environment, treated with the utmost indifference.