'Gezi Park' fate my be seen for Istanbul's 3rd airport

Around 2.5 million trees will be cut or moved to a new place during the construction of the planned third airport in Istanbul, the Turkish Ministry of Transport estimated. “We are now researching which airports are the most environmental-friendly, to be inspired. Otherwise the environmentalists in Gezi Park could visit the third airport to demonstrate,” Nihat Özdemir, spokesperson of the consortium that won the tender for a third airport project in Istanbul, and chairman of Turkish Limak Group, announced yesterday, as daily Hürriyet reported.

“We may take the airport in Singapore as an example as it is very green,” noted Nihat Özdemir, adding that they did not want to cut down even one of the trees there.

The new airport is planned to be constructed on Istanbul’s European side between the Black Sea regions of Yeniköy and Akp?nar, on an area of 7,659 hectares. Some 6,172 hectares of this area is forest land.

The Cengiz-Kolin-Limak-Mapa-Kalyon Consortium, a joint venture of Turkish companies, has won the tender for a third airport project in Istanbul, promising to pay the government 22.1 billion euros for 25 years starting from 2017.


/HurriyetDailynews.com/