We have many riches, unfortunately, we cannot know their value until they are lost.
Our natural riches, our cultural riches, our archaeological riches, our streams, our forests, our endemic plant species, the ornaments of our seas, plains and mountains, which are on the verge of extinction, our animals, which are God's grace to us.
We probably won't be able to understand how precious they are until we de
stroy these countless beauties with our own hands.
I do not intend to write a very long article.
When a news I listened to this morning and a few things overlapped,
I realized that I had to sink the sack on myself.
2021 has been declared the Year of Patara. Patara was the capital city of the Ancient Lycian region between KaÅŸ and Fethiye in the Mediterranean Region, Teke Peninsula.
It is an important commercial port and politically the capital of other Lycian cities.
There are many resources for those who want to learn about its history.
It also has an amazing beach.
It has been a protected area and protected area since 1937. If it wasn't, it would have already suffered from the holiday village invasion like other parts of Antalya.
Thankfully, our coasts from Tekirova to the Dead Sea are under protection for now.
In fact, after all this urbanization, concretization and deforestation, although they still can't find a tree branch to plant when we open the window in the morning, I think it's not a divine blessing to hear bird sounds.
The Sea of ​​Marmara could no longer bear the burden of the dense population and industrialization around it, and it finally decided to smite our filth that it had kept and hidden in it until recently.
Just as he was confronted with this, news came that 2000 trucks of sand had been 'transported' from the beaches of Patara to be laid on the floor of the greenhouses.
We called Patara the capital of Lycian history, its beach is one of the spawning grounds of caretta carettas,
It has both historical and natural significance.
Let's go to the 70's if we search our memories.
Where do you think the fight scene of Tellioğulları and Seferoğulları in the desert of the famous movie Tosun Pasha was shot?
And where was the desert where İbrahim Tatlıses threw himself in the famous Sabuha movie in the 80s?
These films were shot on the beaches of Patara. Who knows more?
When an officer working in the Directorate of Agriculture and Forestry wrote the report of these sands taken from the Patara beach, the work was heard throughout the country.
Just when we declared 2021 as the year of Patara. Trucks haul sand from protected sites, where not a single stone should be displaced by human hands.
It will be used in greenhouses so that we can find summer vegetables in winter markets.
You have a great sector right in greenhouse cultivation. You will say that thousands of our citizens eat bread from there. However, I will say that nature is not just a factory that grows bread for human beings.
Unless we can think of seas, streams, lakes as our blood, trees, vegetation, the protective layer of our skin, and the air as our breath, we have a long way to go.
I wonder if we can understand why we are breathless in the pandemic?
When all living things were left without oxygen in the Marmara Sea, we were faced with the question of who should be given priority in intensive care units.
At that time, while we had not yet hit the face of the Marmara Sea, who was in a rush under the water?
Did the creatures of the Marmara Sea have a place to escape when we were locked in our homes so as not to infect each other?
In fact, until we realize that we are the ones who are polluted, breathless, burned, cut off, not seas, forests or beaches, I will say that we see more closures, you will be angry with me.
If we say that we have no patience anymore, we are tired of walking around with masks, we want to continue living as before, we want to travel, dust, shop, go to concerts, give parties, have fun, and continue our old life.
We should be able to put the mark in the place of Mother Nature, and realize why we have to wear masks as long as she is out of breath.
Now it's time to put the skullcap in front of us and think instead of putting the blame on him.
Actually, we do.
But not by thinking. We should all start one by one from our own family, from our street, from our neighbourhood.
While our roads, sidewalks, bus stops and even the stairs of our apartments are still filled with cigarette butts, there is no one to blame but ourselves.
By not blaming others, seeing ourselves first in the mirror, sticking the sack into ourselves, not hurting ourselves if necessary.
Happy 2021 PATARA year to all of us.
https://www.kulturportali.gov.tr/portal/2020-patara-yili