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Opinion
November 16, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 21
taking off from Istanbul Airport, flying to Ankara.
They take a Havaist private bus at 06:40 from Taksim Square and reach the airport at around 09:00. A taxi would have cost TRY129 (€21) plus a TRY5.5 highway toll fee, according to Hurriyet. The net minimum wage in Turkey stands at TRY1,603.
“[The business of ride-hailing company] Uber [Technologies Inc.] is over in Turkey”, Erdogan said intervening in a row involving traditional taxi drivers on June 1. However, Neyran Bahadirli, general manager of Uber Turkey, told news agency DHA on October 26 that they desired to make their 8,000 drivers, including 2,000 legal taxis, useful to Istanbul Airport passengers.
The parking lot at the airport will be free of charge until the end of this year, according to IGA.
Payments to Bulgaria
Turkey’s transport ministry, meanwhile denied on August 30 claims regarding payments to be made by the Turkish Treasury to Bulgaria for planes using Bulgarian air space while landing at, and taking off from, Istanbul Airport.
The feasibility of Erdogan’s “largest” airport project is another concern. The cost of the first phase is controversial. Some media outlets claim $12bn was invested but official state news service Anadolu Agency reported it cost only $7.2bn.
Ataturk Airport will become idle and the future of Istanbul’s third airport, Sabiha Gokcen, located on the Anatolian side of Istanbul is also not certain.
The construction contract for Istanbul Airport went to a consortium of Cengiz-Mapa-Limak- Kolin-Kalyon consortium, known as IGA. It bid €22.2bn for the rights to construct and operate the facility for 25 years.
Limak, Cengiz, Kolin and Kalyon were among the top 10 global private participants in infrastructure projects between 1990 and the end of the first half of 2018, according to the World Bank.
Corruption allegations made by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) do not carry any news value under the current conditions in Turkey because “dog bites man” is not news. But we may have some news in the future if it can be proved that a government project has not been tainted by any claims of graft.
Insolvency protection
In April, Turkey’s transportation minister caused consternation by indicating that the airport build- ers required protection from insolvency. The consortium subsequently went into talks for another one billion euros in loans which it reportedly obtained by late May from a consor- tium of local public and private lenders.
On October 25, Kadri Samsunlu, CEO of IGA, said revisions were made to the annual €1bn airport fee agreement with the government, but he did not disclose further details. According to Bloomberg, he also said that IGA would consider any loan refinancing offers for the $5bn loan it took out from local lenders to build the first phase of the airport.
Environmental costs associated with the airport, which the Donald Trumps of this world shrug aside as not mattering, are in fact a serious concern. En- vironmental group Northern Forests Defence back in 2015 published a detailed environmental dam- age report entitled “The Third Airport Project”.
Combined with the Third Bosphorus Bridge
— wait for it! It’s the world’s second “tallest”,
one of the “widest” — and the Canal Istanbul — gadzooks! Even submarines will be able to pass through this waterway splitting Istanbul to link the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. The Ottomans gave up on previous propositions for such an endeavour more than 500 years ago — the airport is fuelling a new construction saga of multiple highways as well as new lucrative residential and office projects that will destroy the remaining northern forests of Istanbul.
“We committed treason against this city [Istanbul], we are still committing it, I am also responsible