They ruined Atatürk's country.

He was a general.

He had liberated the Southeast in 1916, primarily Bitlis and Muş.

On the afternoon of December 5, 1916, while serving as the commander of the 16th Army Corps in Silvan, he arrived at the village of Telmih (İncesu) by car. The village was built on a hill overlooking the Batman Valley. He went to a random, somewhat tall house. He became a guest and climbed onto the roof of the house.

He sat down. He drank his coffee with pleasure while looking at the Batman Valley.

He watched that beautiful nature.

He was against the pollution of nature and the cutting down of trees.

While serving in Silvan, he was very angry with a captain who had cut down a citizen's poplar trees to provide shelter for the soldiers. He scolded him. He called the citizen, consoled him, and paid for the cut poplars.

He pushed back the Russians in the Çapakçur and Bingöl battles. Then, on the morning of June 12, 1917, he arrived at the village of Elazığ/Sekerat/Kumik. He stopped by Süphantepe in the north. He climbed to the Kumik Plateau. From there, he watched the Russian front. This hill was the intersection point of the Tunceli, Erzurum, and Bingöl triangle. The river, with the Peri Stream coming from the Tunceli-Bingöl mountains and the Ohi Creek coming from Karakoçan, met right in front of him. And it was flowing right in front of him.

He sat down and watched this beautiful view for hours. He rested in the cool, calm flow of the Peri Stream and Ohi Creek. But he was anxious. Because he always had the liberation of Anatolia on his mind.

The day would come, and surely one day that would happen too.

On that day, the local people called that place “Pasha’s Plateau” instead of “Kumik Plateau” in his honor.

In memory of the liberation of Bingöl, they named the Kumik Plateau, where he rested, after him.

In 1917, while he was the 2nd Army Commander, he was resting under a willow tree by the pool at the Sem’an Mansion in Diyarbakır. He loved that place. He found peace there. When he left the mansion, the people of Diyarbakır thanked him for liberating the city. Yet he did not say things like “Yes, we liberated it.” He replied very modestly, “We are soldiers; it is our duty to liberate the homeland.”

He was in awe of Anatolia, its stones, and its soil. He was madly in love with its trees, its greenery, and its forests.

When Anatolia, to which he was attached with such love, was occupied, he thought the time had come.

The calendar pages showed May 1919. He said goodbye to his mother at his home in Şişli, Istanbul; the farewell had been very sorrowful.

Because when he was leaving, his mother had a heart attack and fainted.

He went down to the hallway,

His sister was reproaching him as if to say, “Where are you going again?” Because he had never stayed at home. For years, he had run from front to front. He remained silent. He hugged his sister and held her to his chest. He said goodbye to her as well without answering.

He turned to the stairs and ran down the steps.

He could not answer because he was going to occupied lands. Who knows, perhaps he was going to his death. But he could not tell his sister, “I am going to my death.” He went out into the garden; he was about to open the garden gate when he noticed a honeysuckle flower on his right. He reached out his hand, and just as he was about to pick it, he did not want to separate the flower from its stem.

He gave up.

His conscience did not allow him to separate that branch from its stem. He could not bring himself to do it.

In short, the place he went to was Samsun. It was Anatolia. He was going to liberate Anatolia, which had been occupied on all sides.

He went. He formed an army, fought, took Anatolia behind him, and struggled against a host of enemies. He saved the homeland. He saved all the lands of Anatolia. He saved not only its people but all living things, animals, plants, nature, trees, forests, and all its beauties.

He became the head of the country he saved. He established model farms. He started a reforestation campaign. He equipped even the most barren and swampy places with trees. He was in awe of plants and trees. For example, in the one-room hut he had built for himself in Söğütözü, he would pull up a chair and sit in the shade of the willow.

He would listen to the birds singing. He would say, “Culture is being happy with the high yields of nature.”

He established a model farm for the villagers in a place where everyone said, “It is impossible.” He said, “This is the land of the homeland; we cannot abandon it to its fate.” He said, “Eyes that do not see green are deprived of the pleasure of color. Reforest this place so that even a blind person can realize they are among the greenery.”

When they were about to cut down a tree reaching toward his mansion in Yalova, he intervened. He did not let them cut it. He replied to the gardener who said the branch was damaging the mansion: “A living branch is not cut. That branch will stay, the mansion will go.”

He moved the mansion; he changed its location.

He said, “As long as we protect nature, it will protect us,” and “A forest without trees and land without trees is not a homeland.” To him, civilization was trees, flowers, and greenery.

He kept saying this constantly. That great man eventually closed his eyes to life.

He was buried in the lands he loved.

Then time passed, days chased months, months chased years, and history reached the 2000s.

Those who came after him sold the beautiful lands of that beautiful country parcel by parcel. Its trees, its greenery, its branches, everything. They burned its forests for hotels, and they massacred nature by having foreigners dig for mines.

They were supposedly going to extract gold.

But they did not know that forests were more valuable than gold.

Because “Protecting the environment was a requirement of reason.” The person who said these words was, of course, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

He was also the person we have been talking about since Silvan. According to him, massacring the environment for money or gold was foolishness.

According to him, trees, birds, insects, forests, and saplings were a whole homeland.

To harm them was to harm the homeland.

But today, they have harmed that very homeland. They have committed treason against the homeland, which is even worse than foolishness.

They have unfortunately ruined the beautiful country of Atatürk, who could not even bring himself to pick a branch of a honeysuckle flower.