President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with the youth as part of the library talks and spoke about Canal Istanbul. President Erdoğan’s statement came as follows:
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“Canal Istanbul is actually an 11-year-old project, it’s a step we took when I was the mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.
It is imperative that we take a step towards Kanal Istanbul, as the Bosphorus strait poses a threat to the massacre of the environment at any moment.
Especially at the point of bends, where the Bosphorus has the advantage that ships may experience what we call a rudder lock situation in some places.
There are places where they cannot maneuver when necessary, and there have been accidents in the Bosphorus several times.
And the last time a Russian warship was there, you know, it had an accident, unfortunately.
Once the Romanian oil tanker was, unfortunately, a fire threat in Istanbul Selimiye, and the Romanian tanker burned there for about 7 months.
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The dry cargo ship came and laid it onshore at Kandilli, so shall we never learn anything from it?
We need to learn from these disasters, especially since the Bosphorus, through which 45,000 ships pass annually, cannot carry this traffic any longer.
Current forecasts indicate that this number will reach 78,000 in 2050, and traffic is constantly increasing.
However, the capacity of the safe passage of the strait is only 25,000, since we were not able to close the Bosphorus to the passage of ships.
We now have the only chance to face the increased traffic, which is Kanal Istanbul.
We told both sides of the 500,000-person Canal Istanbul included in the project, let’s build a city.
And while creating this for both sides, we’re taking steps that we call urban planning, you know, it’s high-quality construction at the drop-off point, also in Istanbul and all over Turkey.
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For example, there is a problem in Avcilar in Istanbul, which is the earthquake problem, let’s say to our compatriots here, look, there are very beautiful houses here.
Let’s show them as a solution to earthquake threats from different parts of Istanbul and move them here, so let’s save our people from these threats.
And our goal is the horizontal architecture, not the vertical architecture on either side of this channel, the +4 floor didn’t know +5…no more.
We said, “Let’s do this around Kanal Istanbul in Istanbul with an architecture that makes it look very beautiful with such a structure.”
51 scientists from 11 different universities and a total of 204 experts serve here.
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As a result of this task, the canal is 45 kilometers long, at least 275 meters wide, 20.7 meters deep, and say 21, and this depth is called into question.
Studies have shown that the movement of ships in the Istanbul Canal will be 13 times safer than in the Bosphorus.
This is given that there is a 13 times safer situation, so does it make sense for us to continue the resistance in the Bosphorus?
Big tankers and cargo ships, we will have to close the Bosphorus to them and take them all to our Istanbul Canal.
We cannot leave such a project that will bring a new era to our country at the mercy of the opposition, our goal with Kanal Istanbul is first-class:
- Elimination of environmental danger
- Eliminate all accidents in Istanbul to a large extent
- Provide a more healthy movement.
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And another step here with ports and marinas, this project will have an exceptional place in the world.
We will make it pointable, the opposition’s approach to this issue is very, very ugly, and if we thank them, we can do nothing.”
