{"id":549,"date":"2014-07-31T20:58:34","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T20:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=549"},"modified":"2014-07-31T20:58:34","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T20:58:34","slug":"erdogans-grand-construction-projects-are-tearing-istanbul-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=549","title":{"rendered":"Erdogan’s Grand Construction Projects Are Tearing Istanbul Apart"},"content":{"rendered":"

By ALEXANDER CHRISTIE-MILLER
\nNewsweek<\/em><\/p>\n

Late one night in the maze of wooden houses beneath Istanbul\u2019s ancient city walls, an old man rose from his bed, scrawled a suicide note, and gulped down a bottle of pesticide. For months Ismet Hezer had watched his neighbours in the close-knit neighbourhood of Tokludede crumble under intense pressure to sell their homes, which were earmarked to be demolished as part of an \u2018urban renewal\u2019 scheme. Residents had been kicked out, and others had sold up at knockdown prices to government-linked developers who told them they would otherwise be nationalised.<\/p>\n

Just two days earlier the local authority had sent Hezer a letter threatening that he and his family would be evicted from the house he had owned for 45 years. \u201cThey want to take my children\u2019s nest from their hands,\u201d read his spidery script in the note found in his pocket, addressed to a prosecutor.<\/p>\n

He singled out the people he blamed for his dilemma: Mustafa Demir, the mayor of the local Fatih Municipality, and Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, the Turkish Prime Minister and leader of the Justice and Development party (AKP). \u201cThese people are responsible for this death, please do what is necessary,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>
The last remaining house in an area which is being redeveloped in Fikirtepe on the Asian side of Istanbul. Ivor Prickett\/Panos for Newsweek<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tokludede is among a clutch of neighbourhoods on the front line of a \u00adprofit-driven development surge that some fear will tear the heart out of Istanbul\u2019s old city. It also forms part of a wider drive to transform the city, which critics claim is lubricating a system of political patronage that is helping Erdo\u011fan tighten his grip on Turkey after 11 years in office.<\/p>\n

In the coming days, the Turkish premier is widely tipped to entrench his power further by becoming the country\u2019s first directly elected president in polls due on August 10th.<\/p>\n

A key plank of his campaign is the $100 billion-worth of infrastructure and development spending currently slated for Istanbul alone. A decade of investment and economic growth has helped turn the city into a vibrant cultural hub with a thriving art and cultural scene, and which was this year named the world\u2019s most popular tourist destination by users of the website Trip Advisor<\/p>\n

At a ceremony on July 25th to open a high-speed trainconnecting Istanbul to the capital Ankara, Erdo\u011fan again touted his government’s development agenda. He said: \u201cWe are now a country which makes its dreams come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

Projects include plans to cut down thousands of acres of forest to make way for the world\u2019s largest airport, a road tunnel that will pump traffic into the city\u2019s historic core, and an artificial Bosphorus to run parallel to the original, flanked by 100 square miles of new developments. The government claims the projects are part of an effort to turn Istanbul into a \u201cglobal city\u201d.<\/p>\n

Critics counter that it will irreversibly damage its cultural heritage and transform it into a polluted, water-starved megalopolis. \u201cThis is being done in the name of modernisation, but the truth is that Istanbul\u2019s history and also its future is being destroyed,\u201d says M\u00fccella Yapici, head of the city\u2019s Chamber of Architects. \u201cIt\u2019s being done at such a pace that it\u2019s impossible for the city to resist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last December, two years after Hezer penned his suicide note, his plea to a prosecutor seemed prophetic. Demir was arrested, as both he, Erdo\u011fan and many other key players in Istanbul\u2019s development boom became embroiled in the largest corruption scandal in \u00adTurkey\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

On December 17th, along with other officials at Fatih Municipality, which covers Istanbul\u2019s touristic centre, Demir was held on allegations he illegally awarded construction permits. Erdo\u011fan himself was accused of forcing a group of businessmen \u2013 part of a consortium that had won the tender to build the airport \u00ad\u2013 to raise $450m to buy a failing media group, ensuring it remained in government-friendly hands. In return, the group were to be rewarded with \u00adconstruction contracts.<\/p>\n

Other investigations alleged corruption and bribery between government officials and developers in other projects around Istanbul. In a series of tapped phone calls supposedly held on the day of the first arrests and later leaked online, voices alleged to be those of Erdo\u011fan and Bilal were heard discussing how to dispose of tens of millions of dollars hidden in their homes.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the prime minister did not respond to questions sent by Newsweek regarding the allegations, and the outsized role the prime minister allegedly plays in development projects. Questions to Fatih Municipality regarding alleged corruption there also went unanswered.<\/p>\n

In public statements, the government claims that the investigations amounted to an attempt at a coup d\u2019etat by a religious movement long-allied to Erdo\u011fan and with deep roots in the judiciary and police. \u201cIt is highly likely that an illegal group within the judiciary could manipulate some facts by laying plots, and use them for their own benefit,\u201d says Osman Can, a retired rapporteur to Turkey’s Constitutional Court and a member of the AKP\u2019s central committee.<\/p>\n

Critics, while generally not disputing that the investigations were politically motivated, claim that they none the less exposed an organised system of construction-based corruption geared towards cementing Erdo\u011fan\u2019s political power. \u201cThe government is using the construction and real-estate sectors to build a financial castle to secure its future,\u201d claims Aykut Erdo\u011fdu, an opposition member of parliament.<\/p>\n

EUROPE\u2019S MEGACITY<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cCan you even imagine an airport like this? Is there anything like it in the world?\u201d says Nail Bostanci, 42, a farmer whose land is being compulsorily purchased to make way for one of the grandest of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s projects. Bostanci gestures across a landscape larger than Manhattan island covered with pristine forest and pitted with 60 lakes created from former coal mines, and points to a row of hills 16km away that will mark the airport\u2019s far boundary. On June 7th, at a ceremony to mark the start of construction work, Erdo\u011fan described it as \u201cnot just an airport but a monument of victory and self-confidence\u201d.<\/p>\n

Both its location and size have been deeply controversial. At 7,600 \u00adhectares, the land allotted would make it more than six times the size of London\u2019s Heathrow. The government claims it will handle 150m passengers a year by 2050. By contrast, Atlanta International Airport, which handles 95m passengers, covers just 1,625 hectares.<\/p>\n

In April, an environmental report highlighted \u201cmassive loss of biomass and flora\u201d associated with the project, and warned that its construction would reduce the flow to reservoirs providing water to the city. The report, issued by Turkey\u2019s Environment and Urban Planning Ministry, nevertheless concluded there was \u201cno better place\u201d to build it.<\/p>\n

Critics dispute this, and claim that \u2013 along with the canal and a third Bosphorus bridge currently under construction \u2013 the airport project is part of a broader scheme to allow the development of vast swathes of forest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ALEXANDER CHRISTIE-MILLER Newsweek Late one night in the maze of wooden houses beneath Istanbul\u2019s ancient city walls, an old man rose from his bed, [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":550,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-region","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":551,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions\/551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}