Environmental ethics approaches adopted in Turkey: Example of voluntary environmental organizations

The main objective of this study is to determine the environmental ethical approaches that have social grounds in Turkey. Therefore, the environmental ethics and the approaches involved were classified and handled in the study as much comprehensively as possible. It was attempted to show that the environmental ethics is largely represented and spread by the voluntary organizations, and therefore the voluntary environmental organizations are the basic ?environmental ethics communities? currently. And, a field survey was performed to confirm this idea and to reveal environmental ethical approaches in Turkey that have social grounds. The sample of the field survey was created in three stages determined specifically for the objective. Firstly, the voluntary environmental organizations were selected among the environmental movement; secondly, those having web pages in the internet were selected among these organizations. In the third stage, these organizations were divided into six groups based on the environmental elements they target the protection and/or development of, and one organization was selected from each group that was considered as more effective. The study that was carried out using the 12 questions prepared and the semi-structured interview method, and the following results were obtained: It is possible to consider the voluntary environmental organizations in Turkey as ?environmental ethics communities?, because the organizations included in the sampling have adopted ethical approaches with fields of interests are wider than the traditional ethics in the temporal and/or spatial sense, that is, they have adopted the approaches of the environmental ethics. It is understood from the approaches adopted by these organizations that ethical approaches that are weakly anthropocentric involving the moralistic responsibilities against the ?future human generations?, that are bio-centric in the main overlapping with the ?ethics of respect for nature? and more widely, the non-anthropocentric holistic environmental ethics covering moralistic responsibilities against ?all the natural beings and the future generations as a whole? find social grounds in Turkey. When the holistic approach adopted by the Green Party and the Leftist Future Part that is not anthropocentric and that overlaps with the ?social ecology? and the animal-centric approach originating from Islam based on suffering adopted by the Animal Party are added to the results of this study, it is seen that the environmental ethical approaches that find grounds in Turkey have unique features and are rather diversified. In addition, it can be said that these approaches do not bear any risks of giving rise to eco-fascist consequences because of their unique features. Key Words 1. Ethics 2. Environmental Ethics 3. Environmental Ethical Approaches 4. Environmental Movement 5. Voluntary Environmental Organizations .