ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Forest Managers’ Perceptions of the Foremost
Forestry Issues and Functions in Turkey
Yalçın Kuvan, Seçil Yurdakul Erol, Hasan Tezcan Yıldırım
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Faculty of Forestry, Department of Forest Policy and Administration, Istanbul University,
34473 Bahçeköy, Istanbul, Turkey
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2011;20(2):393-403
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
Forestry organization is both the main stakeholder in policy making and the application process, and an
important policy instrument in reaching policy objectives. Thus, the managers of national forestry organizations
play an important role in achieving the sustainable use and management of forest resources. The main
aim of this paper is to determine Turkish forest managers’ perceptions of the main forestry issues and the factors
that influence these perceptions. In this direction, the opinions of top-level managers of the Turkish
Regional Forest Directorates toward forest functions, the problems that occur during the management process,
and foremost issues to gain importance in the future were evaluated through a questionnaire. The study covers
all 27 regional forest directorates, which conduct their activities all over the country under the General
Directorate of Forestry. The results of the study show that forest managers recognize the importance of sociocultural
and environmental-ecological functions of forest resources, similar to international trends. They also
strongly emphasized some problems associated with national circumstances such as cadastral and ownership
problems, deficiency in personnel motivation, and problems occurring in forest-society relations.