Only poles remain from the Ankapark wreckage: A 2 billion lira waste

The Ankapark project, which began construction during the term of former Ankara Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Melih Gökçek, is back on the agenda with another item of waste. Only the poles remain of the cable car system, which was built on 1 million 300 thousand square meters of Atatürk Forest Farm (AOÇ) land and could never be operated.

Within the scope of the project in question, a cable car line was designed to depart from Yenimahalle and reach Ankapark via the Zoo and a planned hotel.

However, the Zoo was closed in 2013, and the hotel was never built. Since two important legs of the route could not be realized, the entire project became dysfunctional.

50 MILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENT

The cable car line, which cost approximately 50.4 million dollars, never went into operation for a single day despite being completed. While the unused line became idle over time, only the rusted wreckage of the 30-meter-long poles remains.

The current value of the project at today's exchange rate corresponds to approximately 2 billion lira. In other words, this system, which did not carry a single passenger, caused the waste of billions of lira in resources from the public budget.

The tender for the project was awarded to a company owned by Murat Ağcabağ, who was the AKP Ankara Provincial Vice Chairman at the time.

Due to many items that remained dysfunctional like the cable car system, Ankapark is described by the public as "one of the greatest public losses in the history of the republic."