Istanbul canal May Increase Population Dramatically

The Istanbul Canal project unveiled Wednesday by the prime minister will dramatically increase the city’s population and create a building boom that will damage the environment, experts said following the announcement.

Building the canal, along with the planned construction of a third Bosphorus bridge in northern Istanbul, will bring the city’s population to 25 million and the Thrace region’s population to 45 million, said Cemal Gökçe, the chairman of the Istanbul Chamber of Construction Engineers.

At least 13 million people currently live in Turkey’s largest city.

“The implementation of this project tied with the third bridge will create areas [for real-estate income] in the northern parts of Istanbul,” Gökçe said. “Confusing the present shape of Istanbul with its former conditions in the 1990s and proposing projects that lack scientific grounds is not realistic.”

Critics say the canal – described by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as his “crazy project” – will devastate the natural environment around the city, contribute to air pollution and climate change and reconfigure Istanbul’s geography and population distribution.

Istanbul residents expect “reasonable” projects instead of “crazy ones,” said Oktay Ekinci, the former head of the Turkish Chamber of Architects. He said that not asking for experts’ support until after two years of preliminary studies have been made is not something that happens in either “advanced democracies” or “normal democracies.”

“ The Istanbul Canal disregards the urbanization balances in metropolitan plans, turns upside down the targets of city planning and creates a scary ‘zoning coup,’” said Ekinci.

If the actual threat in the Bosphorus is oil tankers, as Erdoğan has claimed, the basic solution is to replace shipping with pipelines instead of building a second strait, he added.

“Why don’t they want to realize that the basic solution can be sustained through pipelines, rather than tankers?” Ekinci asked. “Asking for the people’s vote [in the June 12 election] with this ‘ghost’ project is nothing but playing with the dreams of society.”

Ahmet Vekif Alp, a former candidate for the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Presidency from the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, additionally claimed that foreigners had purchased land worth $3 billion in the area where the canal will be built.

“I do not know the exact date, but I have heard that property worth $3 billion changed hands,” Alp told state broadcaster TRT. “Most of the buyers were foreigners.”

April 28, 2011
SOURCE: Hürriyet Daily News