Page 6 - MEOG Week 13

MEOG Commentary MEOG
Istanbul: a canal too far
A proposal to build a waterway through Istanbul as an alternative to the Bosphorus strait is to go ahead after years of debate and environmental protests.
turkey
What:
The tender process for a new canal by the bosphorus has been opened.
Why:
The canal is seen as a way of lightening the load on the bosphorus.
What next:
The project has been criticised as an environmental catastrophe.
TURKEY held its first tender on Thursday for building a huge canal on the edge of Istanbul, a Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure spokesman said, signalling progress on the pro- ject despite widespread criticism over its cost and environmental impact. The tender is for the planning phase of the reconstruction of two historic bridges located in the area where Kanal Istanbul, championed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is expected to run.
Five companies bid for the planning of the reconstruction of the historic Odabasi and Dursunkoy bridge, state-owned Anadolu news agency said. The valid bids ranged from 408,000 lira ($63,500) to 550,000 lira ($86,000).
The project, which was effectively on hold after a currency crisis in 2018 drove the econ- omy into recession, came back on the agenda in December, leading to heated exchanges between Erdogan and Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a member of the main opposition party. The Kanal Istanbul, which President Erdogan calls his “crazy project”, was proposed a decade ago to run 18 miles west of the natural strait.
The canal will connect the Black Sea north of Istanbul to the Marmara Sea to the south and is estimated to cost TL 75 billion ($11.6 billion). The lane is expected to ease shipping traffic on the Bosphorus and prevent accidents, par- ticularly those associated with oil tankers. The 45-kilometre (30-mile) canal, which will be built in Istanbul’s Küçükçekmece-Sazlıdere-Durusu corridor, will boast a capacity of 160 vessels a day.
After the tender process, preparatory work will take approximately one and a half years. The construction is expected to take an additional five and a half years and the project is expected to be completed in seven years.
It is the most ambitious in a decade-long series of civil engineering projects across Turkey, which include a third bridge over the Bosphorus, an airport that will be the busiest in the world when running at full capacity, and a high-speed rail link between Istanbul and Ankara.
Thousands of oil tankers make up part of the 53,000 civilian and military vessels that transited through the Bosphorus in 2017, compared to around 12,000 ships that transited the Panama Canal, and 17,000 the Suez Canal, but critics say that the construction of new oil and gas pipelines such as the TurkStream project has led to fewer ships using the strait in recent years.
The number of accidents have been falling as well, according to municipal officials, who point to improvements in maritime transport and shipping sector technology.
Cevahir Efe Akçelik, Istanbul secretary of the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects, says he believes the true long-term aim of the canal, rather than easing shipping traffic, is to create a major infrastructure project north of the city to spur development. “The main idea is creating a new city in northern Istanbul,” Akçelik explained.
The ambitious Kanal Istanbul project could displace thousands of people, imperil the city’s tenuous water supply, and impact the Sea of Marmara’s ecosystem. The area also straddles one of the world’s most active fault lines.
The government has said it studied the possi- bility of earthquakes and tsunamis on the canal and surrounding areas, and sought to minimize the project’s environmental impact.
Yet many of the region’s environmental experts say the government has not consulted them.
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 13 01•April•2020