Today is the day our PM will disclose his "crazy project".

Some guesses:

An island in Marmara Sea.

2 new islands near İstanbul.

Passing the Bosphorus by walking.

The "crazy project" will be a new canal to lessen the Bosphorus traffic. Petroleum tankers will pass through the new canal.

I like si++´s proposal of a palm tree island better! 

Crazy land prices on the way for Istanbul’s north

The project is a positive development for the real estate sector,” said Fatih Aktolga, vice general manager at Turyap, a leading real estate agency in Turkey

The Istanbul Canal project, a plan to connect the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea via a manmade canal with the purpose of rerouting commercial traffic on the Boshporus, is likely to trigger a hike in land prices on the northwest of Istanbul, according to professionals.

“The project is a positive development for the real estate sector,” said Fatih Aktolga, vice general manager at Turyap, a leading real estate agency in Turkey.

“Since it is offering a new location [for new real estate projects], it will enliven the market,” Aktolga told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

The company received no feed back from buyers or sellers as of Wednesday, but a project announced by the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would surely have an affect on the market, he said.

Bahattin Kaptan, founder of Kaptanlar Real Estate, in Istanbul’s Silivri district, a district that could possibly neighbor the Istanbul Canal project, said the announcement has already started to be reflected in demands

Critics cautious on project

“I wouldn’t say it is a ‘crazy’ project [as the prime minister calls it]. This is a century-old idea,” Korhan Gümüş, an architect and chairman of the Human Settlement Association, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday, adding that he did not expect such a project to relieve Istanbul’s traffic problems.

“I still do not understand the purpose of the project. Do we want to change the geography?” asked Gümüş, emphasizing that the prime minister has not shared enough details on the plan and its economic and other costs to call it a “project.”

“Rather than a project, just a will [to do something] has been expressed,” Gümüş said. “The ‘project’ might even be thought of as a plan to increase the value of land in the area where the waterway is planned to be built.”

Gümüş also expressed his reservations on the identity of the project team being kept secret. “This is a large and serious urban project and the public has the right to know the team that prepared it,” he said. “Such a project may not come to life just because the prime minister says so. It must be debated and developed in a more systematic way.”

“It is crucial to see the reason why such a project would be realized,” Orhan Demir, a member of the Istanbul City Planners Chamber, told the Daily News on Wednesday. He added that if the main aim is to decrease the number of tankers passing through the Bosphorus, this would not be a good justification.

“There are already alternative projects aiming to decrease traffic in the strait, such as oil pipeline projects,” said Demir.  

Mehmet Gürkan, a city planner and deputy secretary general of the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture agency disagreed with the critics, calling Erdoğan’s plan a very important project for the region.

“I believe it will relieve the excessive sea traffic through the Bosphorus Strait,” Mehmet Gürkan told the Daily News on Wednesday.

The project is crucial regarding protection of the settled areas surrounding the Bosphorus strait, according to Gürkan, who added, however, that further details of the project have to be revealed in order to assess its positive and negative points.

Source: here

Sky is the limit in political rhetoric

The sky is the limit in rhetoric and empty promises to the people. Now, Erdoğan has a dream as well. Frankly, his dream is not as “difficult and farfetched” as ending slavery or putting an end to discrimination based on color of skin. If slavery is long buried in history, if discrimination based on skin color has become a crime and if the Apartheid regime has been buried in the dark pages of history, the project of Erdoğan has a chance of success provided there is a political will filling the sails of such a gigantic project.

The Taliban of Afghanistan will be remembered for the barbaric demolition of the gigantic historical Buddha statues. The Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia will be remembered for the death fields and the mountain of skulls they left behind. Bush Jr. will be remembered for the Iraq War and Iraqis dancing on the monument of fallen dictator Saddam Hussein, as well as the hundreds of thousands of people murdered in U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Will the Erdoğan period be remembered with the Canal Istanbul project? Why not? If Erdoğan can indeed launch such a project and Turkey finds a way to finance its construction, irrespective of whether he stays or not in power to see its completion, he will definitely be remembered as the “visionary leader” who had the dream of such a gigantic project.

Unfortunately, for now it is very likely that Erdoğan will be remembered as the leader who had a “freakish” taste in art as he ordered the demolition of the “Monument to Humanity,” a monument depicting Turkish-Armenian peace and brotherhood. Of course, in time, everyone will forget that the demolition of the monument condemned by the premier for being “freakish” started on April 24, the anniversary of the alleged murder of Armenians by the dissolving Ottoman Empire in 1915. Freak coincidence, no?

Source: here

Yippeee !! We will have a channel too. 

Russia urges Turkey to preserve Montreux Treaty

Russia has warned Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to respect the Montreux Treaty, which gives control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to Turkey and regulates sea traffic, following his unveiling of plans for a new canal.

Russian Ambassador to Turkey Vladimir Ivanovsky told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review that they are still trying to understand the Istanbul Canal project themselves, and that no information had been given to him on the validity of the rumor that the project would be financed by Russian companies.

If the Montreux Treaty is enforced, then the right of free passage will remain and no income will be made from the canal, the Russian ambassador said, highlighting not only the international legal aspects of the project, but also the economic impact.

“To provide a better comment, we would have to know more about the project. But even the Turkish Foreign Ministry does not have a lot of information on it. We are at the information-gathering stage at this point,” said Ivanovsky.

Source: here

Just a lot of hot air. I don´t even take this project seriously.

Turkey is a developing country with limited resources. We have so far been unable to connect our major cities with good quality rail roads and/or motor ways. There is a huge economic gap between the eastern and western parts of Turkey. Starting a project of this caliber will serve just a bunch of real estate speculators and construction companies.