ISTANBUL, Nov 12 (NNN-ANADOLU) – Millions of Turks on Monday, simultaneously planted 11 million saplings across the country, as part of a mass-planting campaign launched by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.
The campaign, dubbed “Breath Into the Future,” aims at contributing to agriculture, while establishing a greener landscape for the next generations, Minister Bekir Pakdemirli said, in a statement posted online.
“We ensured that 11 million saplings meet the soil in three hours, at 2,023 different points, in 81 provinces,” he said.
Planting started precisely at 11:11 local time, with a view to carrying Turkey into the Guinness Book of Records, by planting the highest number of saplings in an hour and creating the largest photo album of the event.
Despite the initial target of 11 million, nearly 14 million saplings were adopted for the campaign, with 212,000 in Istanbul, Turkey’s biggest city, and nearly 340,000 in the capital, Ankara.
Last week, Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared Nov 11, National Forestation Day.
Erdogan Atmis, a forestry specialist, was quoted as saying by Birgun, an online news portal, that, replacing a destroyed ecosystem, formed in over millions of years, with unknown seeds, is no more than a “simple deception.”
In his view, a forest ecosystem will not be formed immediately, but takes at least 50 years, before it can be called a forest.– NNN-ANADOLU