PM Erdoğan Introduces Plan for “Two New Cities” in Istanbul

Plans to build two new settlements near Istanbul will help provide safer housing for the city residents living in earthquake danger zones, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in televised remarks Wednesday. Erdoğan said the brainstorming phase had been completed and steps were now being taken to implement the plans.

The “two new cities” planned by his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, will also provide better access to services and make traffic lighter within Istanbul, Erdoğan said, adding that moving to the new settlements would be completely voluntary.

“When [we] consider that a potential earthquake in Istanbul would create about 100 billion Turkish Liras worth of damage, building these two cities will incur no additional cost for our country,” the prime minister said in a presentation on the project, which he delivered at the Haliç Congress Center in Istanbul.

Erdoğan said the brainstorming phase had been completed and steps were now being taken to implement the plans, according to the Anatolia news agency.

Istanbul lies near the North Anatolian fault line, one of the most active seismic zones in the world. An earthquake in 1999 killed 17,000 people in İzmit, a city about 60 miles to the east across the Marmara Sea.

According to the government’s plan, one of the new cities will be built in largely uninhabited mining areas along the Black Sea coast on Istanbul’s European side, where the risk of earthquakes is lower. The other will be built on the Anatolian side of the city. Each settlement will then have a population of about 1 million. Istanbul is bisected by the Bosphorus Strait, which marks the geographical dividing line between Europe and Asia.

Though the party is using the term “two cities” for the plan, the proposed settlements would be built as new extensions of Istanbul rather than constructing two separate cities, Erdoğan said. He added that socioeconomic inequalities in Istanbul and the Marmara region as a whole would be reduced by this project, which would also strengthen transportation infrastructure by connecting existing highways to each other and to the proposed third bridge across the Bosphorus.

In his remarks, the prime minister lashed out at his critics and claimed the project would benefit the environment while helping the city strengthen its position as a center for finance and tourism. Erdoğan said a third airport is also in the works, with the aim of reaching a carrying capacity of some 60 million passengers for all of Istanbul’s airports.

Some residents will be moved to the vicinity of the proposed Istanbul Canal, the prime minister added. His presentation on the new cities comes after he announced the government was planning to build a canal to eliminate tanker traffic through the Bosphorus, a natural waterway from the Black Sea to the Marmara that is one of the world’s most congested energy transit corridors.

Work on the new cities will begin a year after general elections scheduled for June 12, according to Erdoğan, who is seeking a third term in office.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011
SOURCE: HURRIYET DAILY NEWS