AEGEAN FORESTRY FOUNDATION BY THE HEAD OF FOUNDATION It is the duty of us all to minimise the environmental contamination and to protect the environment. In this context, planting trees and protecting forests is the duty of not only the government but also all the individuals living in this country. The greatest heritage which we shall bequeath to our children shall be undoubtedly a liveable environment. If we fail to compensate the damage we cause in the environment, then it is inevitable that the natural stability shall be disturbed, and that erosion, drought, diseases based on contamination as well as imports of forestry products shall increase.

We have to protect and enlarge the forests which have a vital importance in terms of the satisfaction of the increasing need for such forestry products as wood, timber, cellulose, paper, resin, etc. as well as the protection of the human health and prevention of the erosion and the air pollution. If we want to live in a verdant country, we have to spread this consciousness over all our friends and relatives, particularly our children.

We have to make planting trees a hobby which makes us happy just like reading a book, taking exercises, listening to music, travelling, etc. As an environmentally sensitive industrialist and businessman, I thought that I had to be useful for my country by investing, producing and exporting and creating employment opportunities and to replace what I took away from the environment, that trees were sources of oxygen and the only component of a healthy climate, that sweet and productive rains had been replaced by floods and erosion in lovely Izmir, which suffers from lack of oxygen due to the diminishing forest assets. I was much affected by these facts and the fact that the Scandinavian countries had earned 70 percent of their export revenues from forestry products and we established the Bakioglu Forest by planting 40.000 saplings in the periphery of the Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport with the contribution from the Bakioglu Holding companies in 1995. Later we kept planting seedlings, thus increasing the number of saplings to seventy thousand. 

We planted the last saplings of our forest by having a “fireless picnic” together with our friends whom we invited. In that sapling plantation ceremony in which two thousand people attended, I thought that our region would be very verdant if we all create our own forests. My friends who shared my feelings and I established the Aegean Forestry Foundation in the same year and achieved the plantation of millions of saplings with our excitement which was renewed by each sapling and with the support of the nature lovers. As a result of the appreciation of our efforts by the government, the fact that our foundation was granted a tax exemption and allowed to enter the donations as operating costs in 1998 by a decree of the Council of Ministers encouraged our companies to create forests.

Not abandoning the saplings after their plantation by performing their care as well, our foundation reaches all our people through short films and didactic programmes which encourages sapling plantation by means of the contribution from the visual and printed media and organises contests which strengthen the love of tree, forest and environment in students of all ages as well as conferences which are enriched by visual elements and regularly achieves educational programmes which make the forest villagers conscious of forest fires as well.

We have the desire and will to share the happiness and pride we feel with more people and corporations and to make the Aegean a verdant region.

We expect the very valuable people of Izmir and the Aegean region to congratulate birthdays, marriage anniversaries, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Teachers Day, St Valentine’s day, business inaugurations, etc. with the cards of the Aegean Forestry Foundation by presenting saplings and to form a forest by donating to the Aegean Forestry Foundation in the memory of their friends and relatives.

We heartily support the Forestation Mobilisation which the Ministry of Environment and Forestry has launched. We invite all the people of the Aegean region to join in the forestation campaigns for a more verdant Aegean.

In this promotional booklet, we have intended to share the objectives and activities of the Aegean Forestry Foundation, which is determined to make the Aegean region more verdant.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank those people and corporations who give their hearts to the nature and the forest and to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry and its departments, which have not ever failed to back and support our foundation since the date it was established.

Cem BAKİOĞLU
President of the Board of Directors