Suez, Panama, Istanbul next? The 45km canal dubbed ‘crazy’

President Erdogan’s Canal Istanbul would provide an alternative route from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea through western Istanbul

It would effectively trap 8 million people on a new artificial island in a city notoriously prone to earthquakes

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Haydarpasa port and southern entrance of the Bosphorus strait. File photo: Reuters

Published: 2:19pm, 1 Jan 2020Updated: 8:54pm, 1 Jan 2020

Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s dream project of building a canal in Istanbul to rival those at Suez and Panama has turned into a political showdown with the city’s new mayor.

Ekrem Imamoglu, who won a shock victory for the opposition in 2019 to become mayor of Turkey’s largest city, says the 75 billion lira (US$12.6 billion) canal is wasteful, environmentally destructive and could even increase the earthquake risk.

“Canal Istanbul is a criminal project,” he tweeted in December as he launched an “Either Canal or Istanbul” campaign and withdrew from a construction protocol signed by the previous mayor.

“We will do everything for this project not to be realised,” he told reporters.

This has not gone down well with Erdogan, who has fondly dubbed Canal Istanbul one of his “crazy projects”.

First announced when he was prime minister in 2011, it is by far the most complex of a string of new ventures for the city following a tunnel under the Bosphorus, a third bridge across the waterway and a massive new airport.

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