New land facility: Turkey opens first island airport

Will strengthen President Erdogan’s election campaign

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday opened a major new airport on the Black Sea, touted as the first in Europe built on a man-made island, the latest major infrastructure project to be unveiled ahead of June 7 elections.

Erdogan attended the ceremonial opening of Ordu-Giresun airport alongside Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in a clear bid to boost the ruling party in the looming legislative polls.

The president, elected head of state last year after over a decade as premier, should in theory be neutral in the elections but appears to be playing an increasingly active role on behalf of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“When we came to office (in 2002), there were 26 airports,” he said. “Now there are 54. People did not even know what a high-speed train was.”

A news agency said the new airport was the first such island facility outside Asia.

Around 35 million tons of rocks were used to fill a 1.8-million-square metre area of sea to build the airport, it added.

The airport was originally named Or-Gi after the first two letters of the Black Sea Ordu and Giresun province which it serves.

However, it was renamed as Ordu-Giresun Airport. With the clock ticking down to the elections, Erdogan on Thursday also inaugurated a new suspension bridge, Turkey’s third longest, over a dam on the Euphrates River.

Next Tuesday he is due to open another airport in Turkey’s most easterly province of Hakkari on the border with Iran and Iraq.

In a bid to steal Erdogan’s thunder, the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) on Thursday announced a plan to build a new mega city in the centre of the country.

Davutoglu, who succeeded Erdogan as AKP leader, is under pressure in the campaign to show he can match the president’s charisma which helped it reap almost 50 percent of the vote in the 2011 polls.

Erdogan wants the AKP to win a two-thirds majority which would enable it to change the constitution to a presidential system and enshrine his status as the Turkish number one, a goal analysts say could prove hard to achieve.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 23^rd, 2015.

Like Business on Facebook, follow @TribuneBiz on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.