Densely foggy conditions hindered air, sea and land traffic in Turkey’s northwestern Marmara region on Monday. The adverse conditions actually started Sunday, when vacationers were trying to return home after a nine-day Eid al-Adha holiday.
Particularly in İstanbul, the situation led authorities to restrict air and marine traffic. Some airplanes were unable land at Sabiha Gökçen Airport on the Asian side of the city and were instead advised to land at İstanbul Atatürk Airport on the European shore. These extra landings, combined with the many passengers returning from vacation and the hajj, caused an unexpected intensity at Atatürk, where some travelers had to wait for several hours to retrieve their luggage.
The Bosporus was closed to vessels in transit starting at 1:30 on Monday morning. The authorities later cancelled all ferry trips as well, due to the lack of visibility. The ferries did not begin sailing until around noon. The Dardanelles found itself in a similar situation. Vessels were denied entry into the strait where, according to officials, the range of visibility dropped to less than a few meters.
Land traffic was also obstructed by the fog, particularly on İstanbul’s Asian side near the northwestern province of Düzce. Vehicles trying to enter and leave İstanbul were stuck in heavy traffic due to the dense fog.
The fog had a lesser impact on Ankara but the capital’s residents still had a troublesome Monday, facing difficulties getting to work on time in the morning. Heavy rains are forecast to follow the recent fog. In the week ahead, the officials predict rain particularly in İstanbul and İzmir but, other than the eastern provinces, rainy weather will affect the entire country. The fog in İstanbul should disappear by Tuesday morning, thanks to the southwesterly winds expected to blow through the metropolitan area until this weekend. Citizens residing in the western coastal provinces, as well as in İstanbul, are cautioned to take measures against possible damage due to the strong winds. Temperatures are expected to drop by four or five Celsius degrees throughout Turkey.
ISTANBUL – Hürriyet250 divings since 2005 by the divers of the Underwater Cleaning Movement, or STH, show how filthy the underwater of Bosphorus. The articles of trash STH has found in the strait reflects the various socio-cultural differences of the Istanbul neighborhoods near where they were discovered. A vendor’s cart sits immobile on the seabed off the coast of Eminönü, good luck charms glitter on the seabed at Üsküdar and Stanley knives stab the coast of Kadıköy
Divers recover everything from sofas and wardrobes to cables, paint boxes, batteries, tires, pendants, wheel rims and New Year decorations. Hürriyet photo
The Bosphorus Strait, so beautiful from above, could be equally impressive below, but members of a nongovernmental organization who have dived into the straight 250 times since 2005 say it is filthy.
“Everywhere there are people, there is pollution; only the density of the population varies. Boats are the number one source of sea pollution. Every single piece of trash you throw into the sea is ruining the habitats of marine species. For example, a tire takes 450 years to dissolve. As they dissolve, tires poison the environment,” said Hakan Tiryaki, chief of the Underwater Cleaning Movement, or STH.
STH is a nongovernmental organization dedicated to raising peoples’ awareness of sea pollution. “By diving at crowded places, we wanted to highlight the concept of sea pollution,” Tiryaki said.
Unfortunately, regardless of the beauty of the view of the Bosphorus from above, the situation below is a totally different story. A brief catalog of some of the articles of trash STH has found in the strait reflects the various socio-cultural differences of the Istanbul neighborhoods near where they were discovered. A vendor’s cart sits immobile on the seabed off the coast of Eminönü, good luck charms glitter on the seabed at Üsküdar and Stanley knives stab the coast of Kadıköy.
All right, but is all the trash in the Bosphorus discarded unconsciously? “A truck battery can only be carried by two or three people. Something that heavy cannot fall into the sea accidentally. A 12-square-meter piece of flooring cannot accidentally fall into the sea. There are plenty of plastic bags and other kinds of waste you would expect to find down there. This is normal. But dropping a panel radiator into the water accidentally is not possible,” Tiryaki said.
Most areas of the Bosphorus where the STH collects its data are suitable for diving, and the group only dives on certain days in order to maintain an accurate catalog of what they discover on the seabed. Accordingly, the group is able to compare the differences, for example, across two days of findings.
Thousands of pieces of trash collected off near Harem
Diving at Harem is a bit different however, as a long-term cleanup of the area has been going on for some time.
STH has already collected specimens from a large part of the old Karaköy seaport after it was moved to Harem. Pieces of trash found there included almost everything from sofas and closets to cables, paint boxes, batteries, tires, pendants, wheel rims, X-ray films and New Year decorations. During a four-week diving session, a total of 11,503 pieces of solid waste were removed from the area. Subsequently, divers retrieved a further 15,000 pieces of solid waste.
The Üsküdar seabed is also littered with an emporium of solid waste, accommodating litter thrown from restaurants and boats, kettles, salt shakers, jars, plates, television stands and remote controls, doormats and cleaning materials. Seven padlocks were found, which are believed to bring good luck if discovered unlocked and sadness otherwise. Other waste off the coast of Üsküdar included Harry Potter books, Muazzez Ersoy tapes, Bridget Jones CDs, shopping carts, concrete pots originally installed along the cost by the municipality and four jawbones, which are thought to have been used in witchcraft.
Free Akbils at Kadıköy
A total of 22 Akbils were retrieved from the seabed at Kadıköy. “Obviously, an official in the area dumped them all into the water at the same time,” Tiryaki said.
At the end of a dive in 2006 off the coast of Caddebostan, numerous glass bottles, 180 plastic bags and countless picnic paraphernalia were retrieved.
The team has discovered Suadiye’s coast is comparatively unpolluted. In their first dives in the area they retrieved only 11 plastic bags and chip packets, 12 metal bars and some rope. During a dive in 2006, the team also retrieved a fax machine, a doormat, 15 tires and boat parts, however they acknowledge that pollution in the area is comparatively low.
Dives throughout 2009 proved the cleanest part of the Bosphorus was Kuzguncuk. A mere 37 pieces of trash – wood, glass bottles, cups, rakı glasses, broken porcelain plates and a broom – were retrieved.
Eminönü, the most ‘cosmopolitan’
Dives in 2006 revealed the seabed off the coast of Eminönü to contain one of the Bosphorus’ most eclectic collections of solid waste, which included a city police cart, a cell phone, an iron, an assortment of bottles, a wedding ring, pieces of metal, eight blocks of glass, a set of pincers and a pair of handcuffs.
Another dive at Eminönü in 2008 recovered a car tire, two bicycles, a wrought iron flower stand, a nargile water pipe, a sewing machine, an assortment of brushes, a fire extinguisher, a kettle, toys and a newspaper stand.
The team has dived almost every year at Karaköy since 2005, with the most visible pile of waste on the seabed being a forest of fishhooks. Thousands of lead sinkers, artificial bait and a tangle of fishing line litter the sea bed, as well as drink bottles, diamond cutters, tiles, a tennis racket, a microphone, a manicure set, a radio, a handgun, a barbeque, a barbecue chimney, an identity card, a knife, a Bible and an assortment of wallets, thought to have been thrown into the sea by thieves, were retrieved.
A dog collar at Bebek
To date, a total of eight dives have been conducted at Ortaköy, with materials removed ranging from a urinal, supermarket shelving, a municipal park bench, a school desk, a two-meter glass rod, two big pots and a ledger apparently logging the financial activity of some kind of illegal trafficking.
Divers in front of Bebek Park retrieved three automobile batteries, a park bench with concrete legs, a spatula, a kettle, a dog collar, a sack of mussels, a pair of pants, a towel and a potato.
Foça is also like Harem
STH has dived in a number of different coastal areas in Turkey, and the situation is not much different than what they discovered in the Bosphorus. At Altınkum in Didim, four divers retrieved 600 pieces of solid waste.
The seabed beneath marinas in particular is in very poor condition, Tiryaki said. At the Aegean resort of Foça, the situation is nearly as bad as it is in Istanbul’s Harem, with a total of 10,000 pieces of solid waste collected from the seabed there.
Çanakkale Port is as badly contaminated as the Bosphorus, Tiryaki said.
Something should be done
Many social responsibility projects kill two birds with one stone. A campaign titled “Ataşehir collecting caps, removing obstacles,” launched by the Ataşehir Municipality is one of them.
Begun on April 22 and scheduled to run until Dec. 30, the campaign both raises awareness of the benefits of recycling and provides wheelchairs for people with disabilities. Plastic bottle lids are collected and sold as plastic junk, with the proceeds going to purchase wheelchairs. The biggest supporter of the campaign is the Aegean University’s School of Dentistry.
The International Center for the Disabled in Ankara is the center of the campaign. So far, nine tons of bottle lids have been collected in Istanbul, eight tons in İzmir and four tons in Ankara.
“We are sending recycling bins to campaign participants. If people wish, they can be a part of the project even using a different bin,” Ataşehir Mayor Battal İlgezdi said.
The municipality has so far sent about 400 kilograms of bottle lids to the firm buying the plastic junk to pay for as many wheelchairs as the campaign can purchase. “There are 45 applications for wheelchairs. Normally, one kilogram of the junk plastic is worth 55 kuruş, but the campaign receives 95 kuruş per kilo,” İlgezdi said.
With discounted wheelchairs also being made available to the campaign, a chair normally sold for 400 Turkish Liras will only cost the campaign 200 liras. To date, collected bottle lids have paid for about 100 wheelchairs.
Plastic bottle lids can be donated to the Ataşehir Municipal Environment Protection and Control Directorate, which can be contacted by telephone at 0216 570 5099.
ISTANBUL – As the ferry taking me to the Asian side of the Bosporus – Avrasya – brushes past a gigantic oil tanker, its dark silhouette looming over our small boat, I reflect that Turkey’s straits are going to see oil tanker traffic increase dramatically if Russia and Kazakhstan double the capacity of the CPC pipeline, which transports Caspian oil from Kazakhstan’s Tengiz field to the Russia’s Novorossiysk port on the Black Sea, and a Bosporus bypass pipeline is not built.
I was, after all, in Kazakh capital Astana two days earlier where Kairat Kelimbetov, the chief executive of Samruk-Kazyna, the state-owned firm which manages subsidiary KazMunaiGaz, reminded me that CPC (Caspian Pipeline Consortium) shareholders have agreed to enlarge the capacity of the pipeline to 67 million tons of crude a year from the current 30 million tons. “They have their own structure how to manage this process and we agreed from the beginning,” he said on 8 November.
A key component of the plan to double the capacity of CPC pipeline was Russia getting a deal to bypass the Bosporus. Russia Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was scheduled to arrive in Sofia on 13 November “to talk directly to the Bulgarians about energy cooperation and, of course, the number one item is the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline,” Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Moscow’s Uralsib Bank, told me by phone earlier, referring to a long-stalled planned project pushed by Moscow offering an alternative route for Russian oil for bypassing the Bosporus and the Dardanelles. The project will have tankers unload oil at Burgas port where it would be transported through a 280-kilometers-long pipe to the Greek port of Alexandroupolis. The Bulgarian government has been dragging its feet on the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline, citing environmental reasons.
The project competes with a similar pipeline agreed between Russia and Turkey last year to carry oil from the Turkish Black Sea port of Samsun to its Mediterranean port at Ceyhan. The Samsun-Ceyhan agreement was a critical factor in Russia retaining the transit of Kazakh oil. “In other words there was no way the CPC pipeline could have been doubled unless there was a deal on the bypass of the Bosporus,” Weafer said.
But he noted that Russia needs both projects. “Two reasons for that. One reason is that they need both projects in order to free up the Bosporus to get the oil out. The second reason why they want Bulgaria is it would increase Bulgaria’s economic dependency on Russia, something the Bulgarians have been very keen to avoid over the years,” he said, adding that environmental concerns are only part of the reason for Sofia’s objections to the project. For pure economic reasons, Bulgaria now had to agree a deal on South Stream gas pipeline and Russia is now hoping to extend that with a deal on the oil pipeline.
Weafer noted that Moscow needs the Burgas-Alexandroupolis and Samsun-Ceyhan pipelines built in order to get the oil out of the Bosporus so Russia can develop the Novorossiysk seaport as an alternative goods port in the Black Sea. And it won’t happen if ships are queuing up behind oil tankers to get out of the Bosporus.
KGeropoulos@NEurope.eu
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via More oil tankers through the congested Bosporus – New Europe.
Istanbul is actually an extremely interesting city.(Source: Global Times/IC)
By Harvey Dzodin
BEIJING, Aug. 30 (Xinhuanet) — Istanbul is by far the most exotic megacity I have ever experienced. Every time I visit this metropolis, which uniquely straddles Asia and Europe, I am always, without fail, blown away by the sounds, sights and smells of this gem mounted in its unique setting on the Bosporus strait. And as luck would have it, the best time to visit this tourist Mecca is the next few months.
Istanbul has about the same number of people as Beijing, but it is completely different. Both cities are full of history and grand archeological monuments, but they feel worlds apart.
The city’s character stems from its rich history. Once part of the Roman Empire, the Emperor Constantine made it his capital, Constantinople, in 324. That Byzantine Empire lasted a thousand years. In 1453 it became the Ottoman Empire, which for several centuries encompassed much of the Middle East, North Africa and southeastern Europe. In the 20th century, Constantinople became Istanbul and the Turkish Republic was established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on October 29, 1923.
I remember when I first visited in 1997, what struck me was the special nature of the city. At the same time neither completely European nor Asian, Istanbul is an exotic mixture not to be found anywhere else on earth.
Istanbul’s majestic mosques are some of the grandest places of worship on earth. The 17th-century Blue Mosque is renowned for the beautiful blue tile work adorning its walls. The Suleymaniye mosque, built a century earlier, dominates the skyline with its four minarets (or towers).
Now a museum and before that a mosque, the Hagia Sophia started off as a Christian house of worship and was the world’s largest cathedral for nearly a millennium. It is thought by many to be the epitome of Byzantine architecture.
And then there were the sounds. According to tradition, worshippers are called to prayer five times a day from dawn until two hours after sunset. The call is distinctive and from the heart. Because there are so many mosques, it seems like a thousand calls punctuate the air.
The smells too have been firmly wedged somewhere between my nose and brain. The strongest ones are to be found in the Spice Ba
Another thing that Istanbul has that Beijing doesn’t is an abundance of water. Water separates Europe from Asia. The Bosporus connects to the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. You can take a ferry or tour boat up the Bosporus to the Black Sea, passing many fine homes, restaurants and such monuments as the Fortress of Europe, which dates from 1452. Another leisurely trip goes to the four Princes’ Islands, once a place of exile but now a traffic-free paradise of horse-drawn carriages a short boat ride from Istanbul on the Sea of Marmara.
Another must-see spot is the world-famous Topkapi Palace, the home of the sultans for much of the Ottoman Empire. My favorite part is the beautifully decorated harem. Men can go there in safety now, but in former times only eunuchs were permitted. The famous Iznik ceramics there are a memorable highlight. Close by is the sultans’ collection of 2,000 exceptional pieces of Chinese porcelain, which survived the hazardous journey by ship from Chinese ports to Europe.
Istanbul is a city for shoppers. Some of the most modern and elegant shopping centers to be found anywhere are there. Call me old-fashioned, but my favorite place to shop is the Grand Bazaar opened in 1461. It has 58 covered streets and hundreds of shops. Fine carpets, antiques and jewelry are specialties. Bargaining is a must so all of us here in Beijing will feel right at home. Most merchants will offer you a Turkish coffee, tea or my favorite, apple tea, while you sit comfortably in their shop.
Living in Beijing, I appreciate the fact that Istanbul is safe. In fact, its overall crime rate is lower than that of other cities of a comparable size. Not only that but I am always made to feel welcome by the Istanbullus, who go out of their way to be hospitable and welcoming.
It is little wonder then that this year Istanbul was designated by the European Union as the European Capital of Culture. I hope you can go and experience this special place for yourself. It will certainly be a trip that you will never forget.
