Turkey’s president hopes to turn huge building projects into votes
IF SIZE matters, which it does for Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then the $12.5bn building site on Istanbul’s northern fringe matters a lot. The construction zone, a sea of concrete and cement, spills over 76.5 square kilometres (29.5 square miles), dotted by dozens of buildings, including an ultra-modern passenger terminal. It already covers an area bigger than Manhattan. A roaring hive of steamrollers, cranes, dredges, lorries loaded with piles of rubble and 35,000 workers completes the scene. By October all this will have turned into a new international airport capable of accommodating 90m passengers a year, says Ahmet Arslan, Turkey’s transport minister. Capacity will rise to 150m in five years, making it the world’s biggest aviation hub. Just to the west, an even more ambitious project, a 45km-long canal, bridging the Black and Marmara Seas, may soon be under way. Mr Erdogan wants to break ground on the project later this year.
Turkey’s megaprojects have been a source of jobs...