On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ceremonially opened Istanbul’s third bridge spanning the Bosporus, the strait that runs through Turkey’s biggest city and separates the continental land masses of Asia and Europe.
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The bridge – which began being built in May 2013 and was completed at a cost of $3 billion – has been constructed with the intention of providing traffic, particularly freight, with a way to bypass the busy motorways of inner Istanbul and the two pre-existing bridges.
Erdogan to inaugurate Bosphorus bridge was posted in World of TheNews International – https://www.thenews.com.pk on August 26, 2016 and was last updated on August 26, 2016.
“We are connecting continents with the bridge”, he added.
“Be proud of your power, Turkey”, said a TV advert before the opening of the $3 billion Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge on the edge of Istanbul. He told crowds “People die, but their work remains immortal”.
Last week, Erdogan said a 12- to 14-year-old child was the suicide bomber, but Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said later that the bomber was still unidentified and investigations continued. The Osman Gazi Bridge, the world’s fourth longest suspension bridge with the largest central span, will decrease travel time between Istanbul and İzmir, the country’s third largest city located in the west, from nine hours to about four hours, when its connecting roads are completed.
Perched at the entrance to the Black Sea, it’s billed as a the world’s widest suspension bridge, with eight highway lanes for vehicles and two rail lines.
The bridges over the Bosphorus have taken on greater symbolic importance since the failed coup attempt, when plotters blocked the two existing bridges, Erdogan’s supporters faced them leading to deadly clashes. The longer of the two pylons is 322 metres tall – only two metres shorter than the Eiffel tower. “This bridge puts Turkey among the world leaders”, declared Michel Virlogeux, a French architect who was one of the lead designers of the project. “Without using any public sources, we will maintain such mega-projects through the build-operate-transfer finance model”, he said.
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“Everyone should know that we are building the future of Istanbul and in the same way we protect its history”, Arslan told AFP ahead of the opening of the bridge, named after sixteenth century Ottoman Sultan Selim the Grim. “They create their own traffic because bridges transport cars, not passengers”.
