It’s very unfortunate, and it causes species native to Türkiye to disappear. A lot of the salep you might find shopping is a salep mix, meant to make the drink salep, and is mostly sugar. The history of the salep drink is itself fascinating. A hot salep-based drink was for a while wifely popular in England, but then fell out of favor when it became associated with being a medicine for venereal disease https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salep
Orchids have been consumed since ancient times, in Ancient Greece and probably even earlier.
The name orchid comes from Greek, from orchis (testicles). Each plant has two bulbs, hence the name, and it was considered in ancient times a strong aphrodisiac.
These species of orchids can be found throughout the Mediterranean, and all the way to Iran.
It always piques my interest when I hear of something economically valuable that "cannot be cultivated", as in, I wonder how much "cannot" means "not enough tinkering has been put in to figure out how to cultivate it in a cost-effective manner" as opposed to "impossible". I remember talking to a wasabi farmer in Oregon who claimed to have been one of the first to grow a crop "that can't be cultivated outside Japan" outside Japan.
It seems doubly worthwhile to experiment with in this case since it would both keep a food tradition viable and protect the orchid species from disappearing. When I google Orchis mascula I do find info about cultivation (though cultivation on a commercial scale might be a different matter).
Wild orchids are like wild mushrooms. They generate tiny spores that cannot grow on their own, and require help from a third party in the soil.
Wild orchids require fungi in the soil to help them grow. They are not self-sufficient in terms of chlorophyll.
Wild orchids have the weirdest pollination requirements. They require specific species of insects (bees, wasps) and the common bee cannot help. As they do not have enough nectar or pollen, they are trying to attract insects through trickery. Either pheromones, looking like a female insect of the same species, faking nectar, you name it.