African Journal of Agricultural Research Vol. 5(12), pp. 1399-1411, 18 June 2010 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJAR DOI: 10.5897/AJPP10.415 ISSN 1991-637X © 2010 Academic Journals Full Length Research Paper Attitudes and perceptions of rural people towards forest protection within the scope of participatory forest management: a case study from Artvin, Turkey Atakan Öztürk 1 *, Bülent Sağlam 1 and Önder Barli 2 1 Faculty of Forestry, Artvin Çoruh University, Artvin, Turkey. 2 Faculty of Communication and Journalism, Atatürk University, Erzurum, Turkey. Accepted 2 June, 2010 Protection of forest resources is one of the preconditions of receiving sustainable benefit from these resources, particularly in countries where forests are state-protected. For the purpose of ensuring an effective forest resources management, it is a must to have an idea about the characteristics of local people who have a close interaction with forests along with local people’s perspectives, suggestions and ideas concerning forests and state forestry organization. Based on a participatory approach, the aim of this study was to determine the characteristics such as education, age, length of residence, etc. of the forest villagers in Turkey and the relationship between their perspectives, suggestions and attitudes towards forests and forest protection practices. In this study, face-to-face survey was conducted amongst 385 people residing in 32 forest villages in the province of Artvin. The study concluded that highly educated people, young individuals, the ones who have not been residing for a long time in the village and the ones who have had a professional work experience in forestry works are more oriented to speak out the deficiencies and problems in forest protection system than those who are less educated, the elderly ones, the ones who have been living for a long time in the village and the ones who have never worked any forestry related jobs. They are convinced that state forestry organization is not successful enough in terms of forest protection. It has been detected that under- educated villagers in particular and the ones with low income were inclined to take illegal advantages of forests and thus, they have had legal conflicts with state forestry organization. In terms of managing and protecting state-owned forests, it has been understood that villagers are more willing to protect forest resources through a participative and cooperative approach together with state forestry organization instead of protecting, benefiting or managing forests by themselves. Key words: Forest villager, forest protection, participation, Turkish state forestry organization. INTRODUCTION One of the preconditions to ensure the sustainability of benefiting from forests or achieve the sustainable management of forests is protecting these resources. The countries that have adopted sustainable forestry approach in particular pay special attention to forest protection. Within this context, forest protection has been recognized as one of the objectives of national forestry in Turkey (DPT, 2007). * Corresponding author. E-mail: atak08@hotmail.com. Tel: + 90 466 215 10 35; Fax: + 90 466 215 10 34. Almost 99 percent of the forested area in Turkey which has 21.4 million hectare forests is controlled, protected and managed via General Directorate of Forestry (GDF) which owns a large rural organization expanding along the entire country, founded by the state (OGM, 2006 and 2010). Nevertheless, in many developing countries including Turkey, the state lacks the efficiency to protect forest resources. In those countries, although the state owns the forests, people who live in it still take advantage of forests freely and give damage insensibly. These damages are attributed to the population pressure in rural areas, insufficiency of financial resources for forest protection and a common belief that forests are free re-