Officials seize a total of 160 different endemic species out of 5,236 plant seeds the two men, aged 60 and 29, had in their vehicle<\/p>\n
By Habib Toumi, Bahrain Bureau Chief<\/p>\n
Manama: Turkish police have arrested two Dutch nationals at the Kap\u0131kule border crossing between Turkey and Bulgaria for allegedly attempting to smuggle out 57 rare tulip bulbs, the Anatolia news agency said.<\/p>\n
According to the agency, officials seized a total of 160 different endemic species out of the 5,236 plant seeds the two men, aged 60 and 29, had in their vehicle. The seizure is the largest alleged attempt to smuggle plants out of Turkey in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Officials discovered numerous different plant species in small pots, a hidden compartment full of plant seeds, as well as tulip bulbs that had been concealed by newspapers. The vehicle was sent for an X-ray inspection, the agency said. The two men said they were taking the seeds to use in their own garden.<\/p>\n
Experts from Trakya University\u2019s Biology Department said that the confiscated plants, especially the upside-down tulip (Fritillaria Michailovskyi) which is only grown in the eastern province of Erzurum and the eastern district of \u015eemdinli in Hakkari, were endemic species and their export was illegal.<\/p>\n
The Fritillaria Michailovskyi is also known as the Ad\u0131yaman Lalesi in Turkey.<\/p>\n
The tulip bulbs and the other endemic species were sent to the Yalova Atat\u00fcrk Garden Culture Center Institute following the men\u2019s detention, Hurriyet Daily News reported on Sunday.<\/p>\n
A total of 57 \u201cupside-down\u201d tulip bulbs were allegedly seized from the vehicle. The two Dutch men were allegedly seen by Artvin \u00c7oruh University students while they were collecting plants in Artvin\u2019s Kafkas\u00f6r area, near to Erzurum.<\/p>\n
Erdal Kaya, a Turkish botanical expert, said plant smuggling was one of the biggest problems that Turkey was currently experiencing and that there were only 57 upside-down tulip bulb species in the world, making them at risk of becoming extinct.<\/p>\n
Kaya said other countries\u2019 plant seeds were also in danger and added that the Dutch pair had allegedly stolen species from Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria, Iran, Syria and Georgia.<\/p>\n
According to the expert, tulip bulbs are very valuable and are used in cancer and Alzheimer research.<\/p>\n
\u201cA total of 19 endemic plant species are under protection, and the upside-down tulip bulb is among them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
via gulfnews : Two arrested for rare tulip smuggling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Officials seize a total of 160 different endemic species out of 5,236 plant seeds the two men, aged 60 and 29, had in their vehicle By Habib Toumi, Bahrain Bureau Chief Manama: Turkish police have arrested two Dutch nationals at the Kap\u0131kule border crossing between Turkey and Bulgaria for allegedly attempting to smuggle out 57 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":776961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[609],"tags":[5945,5944],"class_list":["post-36200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-netherlands","tag-smuggling","tag-tulip-smuggling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}