President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said late Wednesday that workers at Istanbul's third airport construction site would receive a bonus of TL 2,500 ($943) for the upcoming Ramadan holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The president made the announcement during an iftar – the fast-breaking evening meal – organized at the site where he broke his fast with hundreds of workers.
On Monday, Erdoğan declared that he would strongly confront any coalition option that aims to cease mega projects like the construction of the third airport or the third bridge over the Bosporus in Istanbul. The president's attendance at the iftar with workers is considered as evidence of how much is invested in the projects.
Erdoğan said that the airport is expected to open in the first quarter of 2018 and will be the world's largest. He said that the capacity of Istanbul's two existing airports, Sabiha Gökçen on the Asian side and Atatürk on the European side, is insufficient to meet current demand. He also gave a piece of good news to all workers at the construction site. He said that he wanted the three firms at the site to please their workers, as a result of which the firms decided to give a bonus of TL 2,500 to all their workers without distinction.
During his speech, Erdoğan noted that construction companies have difficulties finding operators and truck drivers for the third airport. He underlined that despite unemployment in the country, employers had to bring operators and truck drivers from Vietnam. The site uses 1,600 pieces of heavy construction equipment, 1,200 of them trucks. Erdoğan said that when there are available job positions with good working conditions, people should not complain about being unemployed.
Before visiting the airport construction site, Erdoğan observed the site as well as construction of the third bridge from the air by helicopter, which lasted an hour. Erdoğan was later welcomed by Istanbul Governor Vasip Şahin, the president's key advisor Binali Yıldırım and former Transportation Minister Lütfi Elvan at the airport construction site.
The construction of the third airport is expected to be completed in four phases. The first phase consists of the construction of two runways and the main terminal, but with the completion of all the four phases, the airport will include four terminals connected with a railway system, eight air traffic control towers, six runways, 16 taxiways, an airport hangar of 6.5 million square meters with a capacity of 500 airplanes, and a capacity to handle 150 million passengers annually, making it the world's largest airport.
The airport will be connected to the Istanbul metro and multi-lane highways will be built to facilitate access. The airport is expected to take on 120,000 new employees once it is opened.
The construction of the airport has been controversial and has received opposition from some environmentalists who are concerned about the project's impact on the area's water basin and wildlife population diversity. But, government officials have constantly reiterated that the airport area was chosen under the consideration of ecological balance, wind data and the natural and artificial obstacles of the region.
Davutoğlu previously assured the public that the environmental zone, tree structure and forestry area around the airport will not decrease.
"While 600,000 trees will be removed, 5 million new ones will be planted in the area as part of the forestation works," he had said.
The first plane will land in the first quarter of 2018, according to Turkey's General Directorate of State Airports Authority head Serdar Hüseyin Yıldırım, who also said at the beginning of July that construction works, for the moment, were ongoing in line with the schedule.
