In 2013, the Gezi Park protests turned into the largest resistance movement Turkey has seen for decades. A similar environmentalist movement formed in Budapest, Hungary, in recent years around a bitter environmental dispute over the City Park. Simultaneously, grassroots environmentalism has been emerging in other authoritarian systems in Europe: Putin’s Russia and PiS’s Poland. Environmental protests have often been identified with grassroots environmentalism, which may leave little space of interpretation of different types of environmental protection. In this article, the authors connect their historical research on environmental protection in authoritarian regimes with current events of grassroots environmental protests, and point out the relevance of environmental history when analyzing contemporary environmental movements.