Turkish Cleanup of Bosporus Now in High Gear

Istanbul’s mayor has thrown bulldozers into his drive to clean up the Golden Horn, the once-scenic Bosporus inlet befouled by industry.

Mayor Bedrettin Dalan has started razing warehouses, factories, derelict buildings, shipyards and a city-owned slaughterhouse that have been spewing filth into the waterway since the start of industrialization in Turkey 50 years ago.

In some instances, Dalan has ignored or circumvented court orders against demolition in his haste to restore the past glory and beauty to the Golden Horn, a 4 1/2-mile arm that flows into the Bosporus Strait dividing Europe and Asia.

“The color of the Golden Horn waters will be as blue as my eyes,” the 44-year-old mayor declared after he was elected in March, 1984.

Installations on the shores of the inlet have been pouring animal, human and toxic industrial wastes into the inlet, turning the color of the water to black. The rotten-egg odor rising from the water permeates the air over a wide area.

Few nowadays take boat rides on the Golden Horn, once plied by the pleasure craft of the Ottoman sultans.

Judicial sources speculate that Dalan may be embroiled in court cases for years to come for his arbitrary seizure of thousands of homes and businesses in the district. However, one of Turkey’s leading columnists, Cetin Altan of the newspaper Gunes, recently lauded Dalan’s action as “revolutionary in the history of the city.”

Altan pointed out that the Golden Horn project is only the largest and most dramatic of several that Dalan has initiated to clean up Istanbul, a city of 6 million.

Dalan has closed a cement factory in one district and razed buildings in the Persembe Pazari (Thursday Market), a clogged center of small industry, wholesalers and iron workers near the horn.

The Golden Horn plan calls for the relocation of the thousands of razed business to the outskirts of Istanbul. Historical buildings, such as the Eyup Mosgue complex, several summer palaces of Ottoman sultans, will be saved.

Playgrounds and parks, and a new sewage system are to complete the project. As a final step, the foul water will be pumped out of the inlet and fresh water from the Bosporus will fill in, bringing fish and other living organisms.