The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has deforested Turkey’s İstanbul through its overbuilding policies, is the biggest responsible for the flash floods that submerged the city on July 18.
Professor at İstanbul Technical University Faculty of Civil Engineering Haluk Gerçek told the main reasons behind the devastation caused by heavy rainfall in İstanbul.
While subway stations have submerged following heavy rainfall, public transportation system across the city came to a stopping point. The AKP’s solution offer for the flash flood was just a warning that "the vehicles should not hit the roads in İstanbul".
Commenting the water flooding incident in İstanbul to soL News Portal, Prof. Dr Haluk Gerçek stated that there is a climate change in the world in general terms, therefore the cities have to adopt certain mechanisms appropriate to these changes.
Pointing out that the construction of settlements that do not fit climate change resulted in the flash floods in İstanbul, Gerçek added, "Unfortunately, we will often experience similar incidents like this, because transportation infrastructures are not designed appropriately to such kind of incidents in Turkey".
'AKP’S OVERBUILDING POLICIES HAVE A CRUCIAL IMPACT'
Emphasising on the profit-oriented transformation under the mask of urban transformation that has taken place in İstanbul in recent years, Prof. Gerçek noted that there is no longer a dirt surface/soil in the city, therefore the falling rain could not seep into underground.
"Rain water flows on the asphalt soil and creates flash floods. All the implemented urban policies cause these kinds of landscapes to emerge. Such kind of urban policies promoting overbuilding in every corner of the city must be stopped in terms of urban planning, especially İstanbul has exceeded the redlines in this issue,’’ he told.
Moreover, Gerçek stressed that it is not possible to eliminate the effects of the AKP-led urban devastation, but if the future urban planning is correctly designed, Turkey would prevent from more destructive results of this corrupted transformation.
MAYOR OF İSTANBUL ON FLOOD: "ONCE UPON A TIME IN LONDON…"
The Mayor of İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality Kadir Topbaş spoke on the flash flood on İstanbul. Saying that similar problems happen in many cities of the world, Topbaş defended himself that "the subway station in London were flooded years ago. This is an unusual, extraordinary rainfall; but if we act careful, we can overcome the problem."
Due to everlasting overbuilding policies of the AKP government within the context of profit-oriented urban transformation, most of the cities in Turkey has been covered with constructions and unplanned infrastructure. Moreover, these constructions and unplanned infrastructures cause deforestation in the country.
Another flood disaster had claimed the lives of 31 people in İstanbul in 2009, while a flood disaster in Samsun, north coast province of Turkey, had killed 13 citizens in 2012.
