The Chamber of City Planners announced that the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization released four different master plans regarding transit routes in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. These master plans cover construction of a new road passing through METU campus, a road construction near lake Eymir, expansion of METU tunnel, and construction of two roads joining AOÇ with the nearby boulevards.
The planned new road passing through METU campus will be 4.4 kilometres long. A large part of this area is a second-degree natural site. In addition to this, the Ministry of Culture had approved this area as a "Possible Archeological site" in the original master plans of METU campus.
The Chamber of City Planners also noted that the planned new road around lake Eymir is completely out of necessity and will destroy the specially protected environmental area around Gölbaşı, the district where lake Eymir is located.
According to the new master plan, the expansion of METU tunnel is projected to be done by means of a method that will damage the ground and necessitate uprooting of trees. The previous note in the protective master plan for METU regarding this method has been omitted in the new master plan.
The Chamber of City Planners also warned that the construction of two roads joining AOÇ with the nearby boulevards means the total destruction of the forest farm.
A significant part of AOÇ had already been destroyed with the construction of President Erdoğan's Presidential Palace, the mayor Melih Gökçek's extravagant amusement park project Ankapark, and Ankara boulevard running through the forest.
AOÇ is a first-degree protected natural site and one of the early symbolic public spaces of the Republic of Turkey, dating back to 1920s. In 2014, 50 acres of AOÇ had been destroyed for the construction of a new presidential complex for President Erdoğan despite several court decisions for the termination of construction. Hence the palace is notoriously called "Kaçak Saray" in Turkish, meaning an illegal palace.
Some part of METU forest, on the other hand, had been destroyed during the construction of a boulevard in 2013, causing mass protests for weeks. Lake Eymir is also a property of METU and Ankara mayor Melih Gökçek has noted his aim of pillaging the specially protected environmental area around Lake Eymir in many occasions.
