Moving Turkey’s oldest olive tree is first degree murder

YONCA TOKBAŞ

Have you ever grown a plant from a kernel, seed or seedling? I did. It is a life-long labor. It is love. It requires enormous patience.

Patience is a virtue you can only understand the day you grow your own plant from a seed. 

I care a lot about my Japanese plum seedlings that I saved about eight years ago. I planted two seeds of the last two fruits of a dying tree in a pot. In four years, the seedlings grew 15 centimeters. I separated them with the utmost care into two pots. In six years, one was 80 centimeters tall, the other 50. I planted them in my garden’s best place wind-wise and sun-wise. They have not yet reached 1 meter tall, but I am anxious to see what will happen to them when there is high winds, etc.

A house can be damaged. You can repair it. But when something happens to trees, there is no repair to be made. One is material; the other is a living creature.

Now, at a stage when I am having a difficult time personally in a legal battle, I came across the news story of a 945-year-old olive tree being moved from one place to another and I was shattered. 

I remembered the process I went through with my Japanese plum seedlings. 

My heart could not take the rest of the story after reading the beginning, which said Turkey’s oldest  olive tree was uprooted from its place and was taken to “this” place for “this” reason…

I shut my eyes firmly and whatever brain and heart power I had I sent it to this dear, dear, grand, sacred olive tree. I silently begged, “Please hold on, dear tree. Please do not leave us. Hold on to life.”

I would like to know the first and last name of whoever’s idea it was to uproot it from its 9 soil and move it to some other place.

This is the same as premediated murder.

In my opinion, this is no different than any other crime. 

What does it mean to risk the life of a tree that has lived for more than 900 years? What kind of wisdom is this? Or what kind of an abdication of reason is that? 

The owner of the idea should step forward; if it was such a good idea that it was accepted and applied, he/she should come forward and admit it. We would like to ask that proud person how this happened, and why. 

Was there not even one person to come forward and say such a thing was wrong and actually a sin to do?

How did you let this happen in Bademli village, in Aegean İzmir province’s Ödemiş district? 

The Antalya Expo, how would you accept this catastrophe?   

How come so many people in that delegation or whatever allowed this to happen? How could they ever approve this? 

Wasn’t there a brave person to oppose this? I would like to know the name of that person or those persons. 

If you had a grandmother who was 90 years old, would she be more comfortable in her home, in a place she knows or when she is taken to a place she does not know? 

Wouldn’t she tell you, “My child, could you take me back home?”

All the grandmothers I knew, each and every one of them wanted to live their last moments on their own soil, in their own home, near their families.

My mind, my reasoning, my brain, my heart cannot ever accept this; I do not accept this! 

How and how and HOW can you spare that darling tree? 

I want an explanation. I expect an explanation. I demand an explanation. How could you dare risk a creature that has to be protected?

I want to think that the president also was stunned by this operation. I don’t think anybody ever asked him.

I call on the officials and executives of the Antalya Expo to make a public announcement. Moreover, I demand an apology from them, and also for them to declare that what they did was an incalculable risk. I demand they plant, urgently, some 946, yes 945 plus one, olive trees in the name of what they made that olive tree experience.