ISTANBUL: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday laid the first stone for Istanbul’s third airport, a multi-billion-dollar project expected to create one of the world’s busiest air hubs.
“Istanbul is marking a historic day. Turkey is marking a historic day. The biggest airport of the world and six continents is going to rise here,” Erdogan told a cheering crowd at the groundbreaking ceremony for the $30bn project.
Erdogan said the first stage of the construction is set for completion on October 29, 2017 — the 94th anniversary of the founding of modern Turkey — and the facility is projected to handle 150 million passengers a year when fully operational in 2018.
“We are building not just an airport, but actually a monument of victory today,” the premier said.
The third airport in Turkey’s largest city aims to rival Dubai’s Al Maktoum International airport, which opened in October last year and is expected eventually to accommodate 160 million passengers a year.
A Turkish joint venture won a tender for the project last May, obtaining a 25-year lease to build and operate the planned airport.
Plans to build a third airport had prompted protests by environmentalists, who oppose construction of the facility in a heavily forested area near Terkos Lake, one of metropolitan Istanbul’s six main drinking water reservoirs.
The project was announced in May 2013 amid mass protests that started as a local environmental campaign to save an Istanbul park from redevelopment.
AFP
