The return of the Bee Sultan: Vibrant encounters of environmentalism and language reclamation in Turkey's Hemshin lands

Abstract This article examines how language and environment become constitutive through the emergent environmentalism of Hemshin youth returning to Turkey's Hemshin lands from major cities. As development transforms the landscape, young Hemshins engage in “reading” their lands, encountering linguistic and material traces like stories, place names, and beehive platforms that orient them toward past lifeways shaping their environmentalism. These “vibrant encounters” provide resources for environmental activism while reanimating connections to Hemshin language, knowledges, and identity long disrupted by Turkish nationalism, outmigration, and economic changes. Attending to the active roles of linguistic and material traces, the article shows how environmental care fosters language reclamation.