The human cost of Istanbul’s 3rd airport | Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Türkei
▻https://tr.boell.org/de/2018/02/26/human-cost-istanbuls-3rd-airport
In the recent days, Turkey’s third airport project has been mentioned in various news for different reasons. Two weeks ago, Ahmet Arslan, Minister of Transport visited the site and proudly announced that construction workers were busy night and day to complete the airport till the scheduled opening on 29th October, the national republic holiday. The airport project is already one of the biggest in the history of the country. Once the 80 million square meter project will be completed, it will contain 120 buildings, 143 boarding bridges and 114 aircrafts will be able to dock at these bridges simultaneously. It is expected that the first test flights will be made on February 26, on the occasion of President Erdoğan’s birthday/
Following the visit of the minister, several testimonies appeared in oppositional media, that illustrated the fatal working conditions and the high death toll among the workers, which seem to be the price for the speedy construction. In an interview with the daily Cumhuriyet, a truck driver reported that since the beginning of the construction in May 2015, about 400 workers had been killed. In order to keep the situation from becoming public, according to the truck driver, families of the deceased had been paid off to keep quiet. On the same days, almost 300 workers in the Akpınar worker’s camp organized a protest against the camp’s director demanding that he solves the problems with poor food, overcrowded accommodation, bedbugs and poor hygiene conditions.