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Opinion
November 16, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 22
for this,” remarked Erdogan in October 2017, apparently calling for developments historically sensitive to surroundings.
Istanbul Airport general manager Kadir Samsunlu said on October 28 that an "airport city" for innovation and technology is also to be built, according to The Associated Press.
According to IGA, Istanbul Airport is truly an award and certificate winner when it comes to sustainability. It is even possible to watch videos on the company’s official web pages showing how officials from the Environmental and Sustainability Directorate Wildlife Management Programme are taking care of wildlife found around the airport.
Wittering website
“Istanbul New Airport, bringing in robots, artificial intelligence, face recognition
and similar features to reach personal information, has been equipped with cutting- edge technological systems such as smart system, beacon, wireless internet, wireless and new generation GSM infrastructure, LTE, sensor and talking objects,” the website witters on.
And now, buried in this lengthy article — and
that is said with no small bitter irony — a recap on the number of workers that have perished in the creation of this latest mega-infrastructure craving, with all its state-of-art technologies, and inflated jargon, fated never to be understood by all but an overweening few. At least 38 souls have been lost in “preventable” work-related accidents and many more have been badly injured, Nihat Demir, the head of the construction workers’ union Dev Yapi-Is, told Human Rights Watch (HRW) on September 21. The transport minister argues the real figure is 30. Suffice to say neither 38 nor 30 names were read out at the biggity airport opening ceremony. Not that those workers still standing did not receive fulsome thanks and praise.
Workers’ unions actually claim the death toll might even be a good deal higher since unregistered work-
ers are also dying at the airport. On October 21, daily Cumhuriyet claimed that Nepalese workers found a dead body in a storm drain during clean- ing works. It was determined that the worker had probably fallen into the drain around three days before his death. His name and nationality could not be verified, according to local media reports.
On September 14, thousands of airport construction workers protested against poor working and living conditions on the site. They presented a list of demands. Sufficient and clean food, an end to alleged arbitrary dismissals and late pay, and action to address workplace safety and a bedbug infestation in workers’ sleeping quarters were among them.
“Behind the glass and steel of President Erdogan's newest mega-project, 30 construction workers and a union leader are sitting in jail
for protesting poor working conditions," Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey director at Human
Rights Watch, said on October 29, adding: “The government advertises Istanbul's new airport as the biggest in the world, but the prestige project has been marred by reports of accidents and arrests of protesting workers.”
Demir also told the The Associated Press that the rush to meet Erdogan's construction-finish deadline was a major cause of the endured accidents and deaths at the site, which employs 36,000 people.
Death by truck deadline
This article is finally wending its way to its hard- earned end, but at the risk of unduly marring Istanbul’s — nay, the globe’s — sleek and slick new air travel hub, let’s not overlook a local media report that in February suggested that some
141 people had been killed and 452 wounded by earth-moving trucks joining the Istanbul traffic with pressing deadlines. CNN Turk looked at the carnage, citing a report prepared by Berdan Dere, who opened a Facebook page to collect data on the issue after he lost his daughter in an accident caused by one such truck that was in a hurry.