In June 2013, after the initial days of mass demonstrations in Gezi park, around one of the prominent squares in Istanbul, Turkey, that started to protest the ripping off the park's trees to construct a shopping mall, officials declared that the current government is the "most environmentalist government" in the history of Turkey. The prime minister and the Istanbul mayor supported their argument with the evidence that the government planted over 2,7 billion trees between 2002 and 2012. The same narrative about the Ministry of Forestry and Water Affairs' contributions and success in extending Turkey's forests emerged in a different format--action plan to plant 5 million trees for 5 million students-- when university students protested against the clearance of campus forest by Ankara municipality to establish a highway in November 2013. While the World Bank data confirm the expansion of forest area in Turkey from 1999 till 2011 in terms of percentage of land area, a global forest cover change map using Google Earth shows mixed results (Hansen et al 2013): Whereas some areas in Turkey have experienced forest loss, others gained forest area, and there are multiple areas which gained and loss forests from 2000 to 2012. Scholars and activists have questioned the overall commitment of the current government to conservation of forests, especially in light of its grandiose projects in Istanbul that would require clearing off large amounts of forest, whether tree planting for rehabilitation purposes count as an achievement, and whether new definitions such as 'urban forests' capture the ecological complexity of forest. This paper examines the debates about forest cover and land use change in Turkey using a political ecology perspective: Turkish government's current plan of afforestation, reforestation and erosion control, and its Action Plan 2008-2012, resonate with the earlier global efforts, such as UNEP's The Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign in 2007, that continues with more ambitious goals to address climate change. However, the policy narratives that focus on the number of trees planted distort attention from the overall changes in forest management policy in the same period, particularly legal changes that redefine forest categories and access to forested areas, the increasing pressures on forest areas from urbanization, and prevent a discussion of who benefits from reforestation/afforestation efforts in Turkey.