Turkish Culture vs American Culture

Recently we have visited the Japanese Garden in Istanbul. This is a place that is managed by the municipality and this place has gotten worse over the years. The landscape is in a very bad condition and also some other paysage elements are suffering too. But this is only a very small version of a public sightseeing place. We have (and had) lots of beautiful sightseeing places around Turkey and sadly we killed half of them (probably kill all of them) with poor management.

Our society is showing no respect to nature on both the management and citizen side. This is a long term issue that the Turkish Government has to solve. (to solve that, they should have a massive vision on this issue) And this is not going to be solved by increasing national park employees or increasing paysage budgets.

Turkish people are flaming up when they heard about American culture. But there is a very small perception difference between American people and Turkish people when we talk about public places. (and it makes a huge impact) Americans count their important sightseeing places as a national treasure. (cultural assets) This could not be a perfect example for this situation (because the national treasure perspective has a historical approach too) but when I typed "milli hazinelerimiz" which means our national treasures to Google (in 2021), the first result I got was national real estate advert web site. Other results were also about the real estate, treasury department (finance). Only one result was referring to natural treasure but it was a quite primal work about artisans which is run by the government. Turkish Government approach this term from an individual perspective. (which is wrong) This individual approach has affected our society over the years and an average Turkish citizen only thinks about real estate and construction when it comes to investment or wealth. And this perspective causes Turkish citizens to kill almost every beautiful thing in nature in Turkey.

So how can we make Turkish society adopt a national treasure perception? Firstly, instead of using nudges (please check nudge theory on google) and other basic solutions we need to change the names/definitions of these kinds of valuable sightseeing places in Turkey.

And after that, we can use fines as a supportive factor. I believe that nudges will be more effective as a supporting factor. Well organized nudge strategy should be used in fine management because most of the fines are not paid in Turkey due to economic status and amnesties on fines that come in specific intervals. If the fines can mean something then they can be a supportive factor.

Finally, one of the most important points is permission for construction in Turkey. I believe that a certain IQ limit has to be set on Turkish citizens in order to construct something. The construction & real estate industries have poor quality and vision in Turkey. But I can easily say that (with a 3,5 real estate experience in Turkey) nothing going to be changed on this issue in the long-term in Turkey. This is the hardest one to change.

I hope we will find a glorified vision on these issues and start to change one day.