There isn’t usually a lot going on at the Sazlıdere dam north-west of Istanbul, one of several reservoirs providing the megacity with fresh water. Yet this week the calm expanse of forest, farms and marshland was at the centre of the latest battle of narratives in Turkish politics.
On Saturday, President Recep Tayip Erdoğan is due to attend a ceremony here for an element of the biggest and boldest of the construction megaprojects that have come to define his two decades in office: his “crazy” Istanbul canal.
The official price tag is $15bn, but the real figure was estimated at a recent developers conference in France to be $65bn. In an extremely polarised society like Turkey, building a canal linking the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara is a rare topic on which almost everyone agrees: it’s a crazy idea.
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The louder the opposing voices grow, however, the more determined Erdoğan appears to be to proceed. He told members of his ruling party recently that tenders would be held soon and groundwork laid over the summer “whether [critics] like it or not”.
Continue reading: The Guardian
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