Istanbul's new mega-airport embodies the Turkey Erdoğan dreams of
Rights — di Davide Lemmi
Istanbul's new airport is not merely a project with an immense impact: it is a metaphor for how President Erdoğan envisions his Turkey.
Istanbul's new mega-airport embodies the Turkey Erdoğan dreams of
Istanbul's new airport is not merely a project with an immense impact: it is a metaphor for how President Erdoğan envisions his Turkey.
On the morning of 22 June, a plane lands smoothly at the new airport under construction. The presidential TC-ANK taxis along the runway, 3,750 metres long and 60 metres wide. Returning from a rally in Gaziantep, Erdoğan chooses, two days before the presidential and parliamentary vote, to appear in front of cameras and television crews amid the construction sites of the new airport. It is a way of reminding the electorate who he is and what his vision is for a Turkey that is strong, independent and possessed of grand ambitions.
What Istanbul's new airport will look like
The new Istanbul airport is, indeed, an immense undertaking. According to official communications, the airport, which is due to open its gates on 29 October, will be one of the three largest in the world, with an annual capacity of 90 million passengers in the first phase and a target of rising to 150–250 million by 2023. The city's third airport, 90 per cent complete, will be the largest project in the world built from scratch. According to the same sources, the airport will host the world's largest duty-free retail complex: 53,000 square metres of shops and bazaars divided into six sections.
After the completion of the first phase, which involves 42 months of non-stop work, the airport will have the capacity for 3,500 take-offs and landings per day. According to plans, the complex will also include a residential area of 100,000 square metres and a mega car park with capacity for 25,000 vehicles, a 42-kilometre baggage sorting system and 143 internal passenger boarding bridges.
The security system will also be entirely innovative, with a 62-kilometre perimeter. Finally, according to calculations by the Ministry of Economy, the airport is expected to bring the country a flow of 73 billion Turkish liras, approximately 13.1 billion euros per year, and offer employment opportunities to around 225,000 people.
From mayor to president, Erdoğan changed course
Despite the genuine scale of the project and its media resonance, there are other perspectives on Istanbul's new airport — social, economic and environmental — that are worth exploring to understand which direction Turkey is heading. In a 1994 video (since removed from YouTube), during a television debate, the then mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, made no secret of his opposition to a possible third bridge over the Bosphorus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMJ8E8RaHX0
In the passionate speech, the current president of Turkey sought to protect the lush forests of the north, described as "the lungs of Istanbul", against urban development interests. The environmental plans for the city on the Bosphorus, later updated in 2009, in fact prohibited any investment, public or private, in the northern areas, which were considered off-limits for urban development. The purpose of the law was to protect not only the remaining forests, but also the important water catchment areas that supply the city.
Yet Erdoğan, as the mayor who signed those decrees, in 2013 completely removed the red line, giving rise to a new wave of urban development in areas previously considered protected. From this came the construction of a third bridge over the Bosphorus, the new motorway ring road and a third airport for the city.
The environmental impact of the project
"When we visited the area for the first time, we immediately became aware of the environmental impact of the airport project," says Selcuk, an activist who is part of the group Northern forest defense. "Hectares upon hectares of land have been expropriated and entire areas, previously covered by forests, have been razed to the ground." The Istanbul collective is one of the few groups working to raise public awareness of the consequences of major projects for the city.
"We face several difficulties," Selcuk continues. "People look at the global economic and media returns without considering the effects of a project of this magnitude." The activist is referring above all to problems linked to the water supply, a vital element for the survival of a megalopolis like Istanbul.
"There are also other factors to consider: the first concerns the immense pollution the airport will generate; the second involves all those activities, not envisaged in the original plan, that will gradually eat up further hectares of forest along the roads leading to the airport," she concludes. The satellite images of the area that Selcuk shows on her mobile phone screen already reveal the fierce exploitation of the land: Istanbul's airport will have six runways and will be built on 7,650 hectares of land.
The costs
Iga is the consortium of companies that built the airport. According to information released by the consortium itself, the partners involved hold equal shares. Under the signed contract, the consortium obtains operating rights for 25 years, during which it undertakes to pay the government 22 billion Turkish liras, approximately 3.8 billion euros; in return, the government allocated more than 7,000 hectares of land for the project and mobilised public banks for financing, in addition to other forms of assistance.
Among these "aids" is an absolute guarantee for the contractors that they will generate profits from the airport. According to economist and writer Mustafa Sonmez, the Treasury will in fact compensate for any gap between the hoped-for and the actual number of passengers. According to estimates by Betam, the research centre of Bahcesehir University, the Treasury will need to pay approximately 97 million euros from the government budget if the number of passengers does not exceed 80 million per year, and 162 million euros if traffic remains below 68 million passengers.
In addition to the allocation of vast tracts of land and profit guarantees, the consortium has also benefited from loans from public banks. According to data from the World Bank, in the first phase of the project, of the 29 billion euros needed to complete the work, loans of 4.27 billion were used. Turkish private banks Finansbank, Denizbank and Garanti issued approximately 850 million of these loans, while the remaining portion came from public banks Halk, Ziraat and Vakif. The attempt to secure loans from abroad, however, failed due to the high risk involved.
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Why use seven thousand hectares of land when half that amount would have sufficed?
One of the most interesting controversies concerns the quantity of land allocated for construction. On this subject, Betam drew a comparison with Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The American airport, one of the largest in the world, has five runways and covers an area of 1,900 hectares. The study then moves on to a comparison with the old Istanbul airport: "Approximately, Atatürk Airport is situated on an area of 1,178 hectares and handles traffic of 45 million passengers per year. If traffic at the new airport reaches 150 million passengers, it would require a capacity roughly three times greater than that of the old airport. On this basis, we estimate that the new airport needs an area of 3,500 hectares."
How, then, can the allocation of more than 3,000 additional hectares for construction be explained? According to information provided by Iga, later circulated by the Ministry of Development as well, the remaining hectares were allocated to build the airport city. The plan includes: a mosque, offices, hotels, a conference and exhibition centre, a shopping centre, medical practices and staff training facilities.
Who financed the construction of the airport
Another interesting angle of analysis concerns the financing of the airport's construction. Drawing on the writings of Mustafa Sonmez, new evaluative scenarios emerge. The new terminal project was awarded to Iga, made up of companies with close ties to the Turkish president. Kalyan, Cegiz, Limak and Mng have been central players over these years in numerous public projects, winning several tenders. As Mustafa Sonmez writes in the columns of Al Monitor, the companies have operated in vital sectors, such as energy distribution, the construction of metro lines, dams and tunnels, in exchange for financing to the media group linked to Sabah-ATV, press outlets close to Erdoğan's Akp.
President Erdoğan’s plane makes first-ever landing at Istanbul’s new airport tccb.gov.tr/en/news/542/94…
The controversies with workers
Istanbul's new airport is a constellation of facts. Among the most sensitive points are the conditions of workers: there were quite a few moments of tension during construction. On 14 February 2018, workers downed tools to protest against working conditions. "We don't want to live like animals" was the slogan during the small demonstration held on site. Management's response? "You can live like animals or you can leave." Throughout the construction period, the consortium kept pushing its luck, going so far as to threaten mass dismissals should workers decide to observe the 1 May holiday.
The most disturbing figure is that of the deaths. According to the Ministry of Labour, 27 people were killed in accidents on the construction site from the start of works in May 2015. But the figure circulated by official sources is not convincing. "Deaths in the workplace are often covered up in secrecy even under normal circumstances. It is too difficult to determine the exact number." Yunus Ozgur, the union secretary, had previously stated that at least three or four workers were losing their lives on the site every week. According to some sources, the death toll is estimated at around 400. For this reason, in February 2018 Veli Agbaba, vice-president of the Republican People's Party (Chp), tabled a parliamentary question to clarify possible discrepancies between official sources and informal accounts.
Two days after the landing, Erdoğan wins the elections that confer and confirm his role as president. It is the first electoral round following the introduction of the constitutional amendments approved by referendum in April 2017. Part of Erdoğan's victory can also be attributed to Turks' perception of the economic policy promoted over these years by the Akp government, the president's party. The new airport is inevitably part of that.