<p>Introduced in the nineteenth century by German intellectuals who equated protecting the environment with protecting the nation, eco-nationalism, as articulated by contemporary critics such as Jane Dawson and Morgan Margulies, is a dualistic term that blends nationalist sentiments with environmental concerns. According to this consensus, eco-nationalism regards nationalism as an important tool for a greener future, while masking latent nationalist sentiments with environmentalist discourses. This article presents the first eco-nationalist analysis of Crimean Tatar writer Cengiz Dağcı’s novel <i>Onlar da İnsandı</i> (<i>They Were People Too</i> 1958). Dealing with the relationship between environment and nation in the context of Russia’s genocide of Crimea from the 1920s to the late 1940s, Dağcı placed the environment in the context of Crimean nationalist concerns and identified the unlimited destruction of nature with the genocide of Muslim Tatars in Crimea. This article aims to illustrate the dual nature of eco-nationalism by drawing on this relationship between the environmentally conscious nationalism of the Crimean Tatars and the imperialist eco-nationalism of Soviet Russia.</p>