The new vision for Istanbul is to make the city “green”. The Metropolitan Municipality places establishment and sustainable governance of urban forests, parks and green spaces among its prioritized actions; “green” future imaginations include lower carbon emission and increase in urban green. Nevertheless, creating “green” future(s) poses many challenges. Whereas the Metropolitan Municipality is governed by the opposition candidate, among 39 district municipalities, only 13 are governed by the opposition. As political polarization deepens in the country, opening and governance of urban parks become ways of exercising political power, and displaying agency and efficiency. Some of the “green” projects are contested by competing political actors, and others compromised for the sake of goals compatible with a particular vision of growth. Drawing on several months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted on Istanbul’s green spaces: their governance, social perceptions, and socio-ecological qualities, this paper examines selected green spaces of Istanbul as socio-natures and as spaces for political contestation and social and ecological struggle. The paper evolves in three sections. First, it scrutinizes the politics of Istanbul`s green spaces governance and their ontological and empirical premises. What concepts such as national (millet) and neighborhood (mahalle) gardens or urban (kent) ecosystems tell us about human-nonhuman relationalities and human hierarchies and imaginations of nature? What practices of environmental governance are envisioned when talking about “green spaces increase” and “construction”? If Istanbul`s future(s) is envisioned as “green”, to whom does it belong? Second, by reflecting on selected green spaces and their socio-ecological qualities, the paper examines practices of environmental governance and asks the following questions: Which practices are applied and preferred, and why? What is the role of aesthetics, affect, learned knowledge and communal belonging in shaping the ways in which humans perceive and engage with green spaces and nonhumans? Analysis of selected key terms such as wild (yaban), clean (temiz), controlled (kontrollu), and natural (doğal) and their use by different actors will facilitate addressing these questions. Finally, the paper critically inquires about the ideas of quantifiable progress and predictable future(s). I argue that the current politics of environmental governance with their premises of progress measured by the areal or numerical increase create instances when “green” spaces are not necessarily “green”. But what future(s) can emerge from the current politics and practices of environmental governance in Turkey? Is “green” future in Turkey more difficult to imagine, plan and create than elsewhere?