ISTANBUL — In a presidential decree revealed late Thursday, Istanbul’s opposition-held Princes’ Islands have been designated as an “environmental safety space,” transferring the administration of zoning rights there to Ankara’s Ministry of Setting and Urbanization.
Introduced as an environmental coverage to mitigate further ecological degradation within the Marmara Sea, the place the islands are located simply south of Istanbul, the transfer raised issues of anti-democratic overreach by Turkey’s ruling Justice and Improvement Celebration (AKP), which has been accused of meddling in a number of opposition-run municipalities lately.
Since dropping management of Istanbul’s metropolis authorities to Turkey’s foremost opposition Republican Individuals’s Celebration (CHP) within the 2019 native elections, democracy advocates say Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP has chipped away on the municipality’s jurisdiction, seizing governing powers in some areas whereas diverting tourism revenues generated in others and likewise blocking municipal initiatives like discount bread kiosks in sure districts.
“That is one thing the federal government has been doing fairly systematically since 2019,” Berk Esen, an assistant professor of political science at Sabanci College, advised Al-Monitor.
Significantly in Istanbul, Esen stated Ankara has been “pushing onerous” to restrict the jurisdiction of the municipal authorities, not just for political motives within the run-up to common elections anticipated in June 2023, but additionally to nullify opposition to the big building initiatives that stay very important to the AKP as an avenue for income technology and to spice up Turkey’s financial exercise.
In a single high-profile occasion in 2020, the Ministry of Tourism and Tradition took over the administration of Istanbul’s iconic Galata Tower, redirecting tourism revenues to Ankara whereas awarding a renovation challenge to an AKP-friendly building firm.
“It’s additionally performed, I feel, to restrict the money stream to the municipality,” Esen advised Al-Monitor. “I imply Galata Tower, another areas they’ve taken over, they generate cash. So by doing this they’re restraining the monetary skill of the municipality authorities to undertake their very own initiatives.”
In districts the place members of the pro-Kurd Individuals’s Democratic Celebration (HDP) won the 2019 municipal elections, the AKP has additionally overseen the replacement of dozens of elected officials with government-appointed trustees lately, arresting or detaining hundreds of HDP members on terror-related fees.
Regarding the Princes’ Islands, whose residents are inclined to vote for the CHP, Oya Ozarslan, a Transparency Worldwide board member and founding chair for the group’s Turkey department, stated final week’s decree was one other “infringement of native governments’ rights” which were seized “one after the other and really selectively.”
“It’s clear the central authorities run by the AKP is anxious about dropping energy after the native elections of 2019 and is making an attempt to grab that energy via these decrees, however it’s absolutely an undemocratic means,” Ozarslan advised Al-Monitor.
She added that Ankara’s ongoing encroachment on municipal jurisdictions is concentrating energy underneath the central authorities and additional away from constituencies and elected representatives, reducing accountability for decision-makers who’re far faraway from native oversight.
Talking to a parliamentary committee Thursday, Setting and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum stated the Marmara Sea rezoning plan would help the body of water recover from a “sea snot” or a bacterial mucilage bloom that clogged fishing nets this spring and raised issues for lasting ecological harm within the area.
Along with native air pollution and rising world temperatures brought on by local weather change, Kurum stated untreated water discharged from city areas possible fed the ocean snot bloom, saying solely 46% of wastewater within the Marmara area undergoes superior remedy.
“Allow us to pace up the improve of waste remedy amenities throughout Marmara,” Kurum stated Thursday. “We have to implement all structural adjustments inside the subsequent three years.”
In a Twitter thread posted Friday, Gurkan Akgun, head of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s Zoning and City Planning Division, criticized the switch of authority to the Environmental and Urbanization Ministry, saying it sought to override municipal growth plans whereas opening the islands to the overdevelopment and deforestation seen in different components of Istanbul in latest many years.
“The safety of the Marmara Sea is extraordinarily very important!” Akgun tweeted. “However it’s not the islands that pollute the Marmara Sea.”
The ministry’s personal plans for the islands stay to be seen, however Esen stated the continued infringements on municipal jurisdictions by Ankara’s central authorities will proceed to weaken opposition officers, who’ve few “instruments at their disposal” to counter such strikes.
“When it’s solely a jurisdictional change, it’s tough to even educate voters that there was such a change,” Esen advised Al-Monitor.
Esen stated that via such decrees, Ankara’s message may very well be learn as: “If Erdogan wins, or his occasion wins, that’s effective. But when the opposition wins, then principally the jurisdiction of those governments might be restricted to such an extent that the end result of an election is not going to quantity to a lot.”
