Ekrem İmamoğlu's 'Disaster-Resilient Istanbul' move: 'When you say project, you mean concrete and rent'

Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu made statements at the introductory meeting for the 'Disaster-Resilient Istanbul' project.

Here are the highlights from Ekrem İmamoğlu's statements:

"Starting today, I will announce our projects that will carry Istanbul into the future across 10 different themes.

All of our projects are populist, fair, and transform our city.

We do not subscribe to the 'can you raise the bid' mentality. I say this to those who want to present our projects as their own by copying and pasting; you can copy every one of our projects as you wish, you can describe them as your own projects. Unless you look at the world the way we do, we do not expect you to get results.

When you say project, you mean concrete and rent; we mean human-oriented and on-site service.

When we took office, we saw that no project had been carried out against disasters in Istanbul. The IMM had officially withdrawn from urban transformation, and responsibility had been left to the ministry and district municipalities. It would be unfair to say they did nothing, but pushing the IMM out of the process caused a very bad result.

"THEY OPENED ASSEMBLY AREAS TO ZONING"

They opened earthquake assembly areas to zoning. They privatized areas that could have been used as reserve areas by the municipality, and produced residences and luxury housing through KİPTAŞ. This is the source of the high rent problem we are experiencing today.

Only 2 of the 69 areas declared risky by the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization are actually risky areas. This is a very grave situation. To put it mildly, you were abusing your office. While there were places on one side that would cause great damage and loss of life, they were focused on the northern areas of the city.

For the last 20 years, they have displaced people from their homes and neighborhoods. They squeezed citizens and contractors into that narrow space and left them to their own devices. An environment was created where no one trusted each other. Citizens did not want to hear the term urban transformation. An incredible prejudice had formed regarding urban transformation. We saw that a new era has begun by reaching agreements with our hopeless citizens in areas that had remained unresolved for years. For example, we solved problems in the Yeşilpınar neighborhood of Eyüpsultan that had not been solved for years.

"OUR CALLS WENT UNANSWERED"

We made strong calls for the establishment of the Istanbul Earthquake Council. Unfortunately, our calls went unanswered. Disaster Coordination meetings were organized where the IMM was not invited. Despite this exclusionary picture, we organized meetings to address the issue in all its dimensions without losing our enthusiasm. We prepared the Vision 2050 plan for a resilient Istanbul.

"WE NEED COOPERATION"

Even though not a single penny of credit was given by public banks to our citizens who wanted to carry out urban transformation projects with us, we continued on our way. We reached 100 percent consensus with our citizens on urban transformation. Within the scope of urban transformation projects, we delivered a total of 5,925 residences to their owners. We need cooperation for a permanent solution.

We determined that the segment suffering the most from urban transformation is our retirees. We will provide 9 thousand lira in rent support to our low-income retirees."