Report : New Istanbul Channel … ”Show Project” Sinks Turkey with Indispensable Debts

Turkey’s transport minister has estimated the cost of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s planned construction of a canal in Istanbul at $15 billion, a cost the opposition had warned would plunge the country into debt that it needs.

Bloomberg News quoted Minister Adil Karaismiloğlu as saying that the six bridges that run through the canal would cost $1.4 billion and that the road before the first bridge would begin by the end of June.

Erdoğan has called the 45-kilometer-long canal, which will link the Black Sea with the Marmara Sea, a “crazy project,” with the expectation that the waterway will create a city of half a million people.

However, opponents of the project are concerned that the project will affect an international agreement regulating traffic through the Bosphorus Strait and the Dardanelles Strait.

Erdoğan said Turkey would not exit the deal, but he sees the Istanbul channel as an alternative; Because the project will strengthen government control over shipping to and from the Black Sea.

But opponents describe the move as a ploy behind a project to appease Erdoğan’s ego, which would unleash massive construction in Istanbul and plunge the government into indispensable debt.

Opposition parties argue that merchant ships cannot be forced to take the alternative route, and that the canal will harm taxpayers and the environment.

Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of the country’s largest city, says the canal will “wipe out” the water resources of Istanbul’s 16 million residents and will irreparably destroy the nature of the province and make it uninhabitable.

The project also raises environmental concerns, with a 2019 study on environmental impacts estimating the cost of the waterway to be 75 billion liras (then $13 billion).

Erdoğan’s government has ignored these concerns, and Karaismil said the government will build two new dams to make up for the water loss caused by the project.