There is no such thing as a bad view of the Bosporus, the waterway that divides Istanbul between Europe and Asia. But the one from the bridge of the Gas Cobia, a 180-metre tanker, as it makes its way from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, is hard to beat. Ottoman palaces slide past. Hagia Sophia soaks up the morning sun. The towers of the Rumeli Hisari, the fortress Sultan Mehmet II used to choke off supplies to the city he later conquered, march down to the shore. Passenger ferries and fishing boats bounce on the waves.

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For Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one Bosporus is not enough. So he is building another. In June, at a ground-breaking ceremony for a bridge over the Sazlidere, a river on Istanbul’s western fringes, Turkey’s leader announced he was starting work on a giant canal, known as Kanal Istanbul, bypassing the Bosporus altogether. A tender linked to the project, for housing units close to the Sazlidere, took place on October 7th. The new waterway would stretch for 45km (28 miles), turn the city’s European side into an island, and cost at least $15bn.

Read more: Economist