Pollution Only Part of Problem : Istanbul Mayor Lights Renaissance

As merely the mayor of Istanbul, Bedrettin Dalan is not a sultan. But probably not since Mehmet II conquered Constantinople and built his fabled Topkapi Palace on the ruins of Byzantium has a ruler tried harder to improve life in this exotic and antiquated city.

After centuries of Ottoman decay and post-Ottoman neglect, alternating periods of economic depression and civil strife, Dalan has sparked something of a renaissance in Istanbul that he hopes will prepare this crowded city of 6 million that bridges Europe and Asia to cope with the latter part of the 20th Century, and prepare itself for the 21st.

Since coming to power in 1984 in the first municipal election after the military coup of 1980, Dalan has embarked on a sweeping and ambitious urban renewal scheme.

6 Million People

“This city is one big headache,” said the 46-year-old mayor in an interview at his office as he sat behind a massive desk cluttered with files, blueprints, pamphlets, engineering reports, maps and his cherished public opinion polls. “Our population has gone from 1 million people to 6 million people in a matter of four decades and it is continuing to increase at a rate of 4.2% a year.

“This is a city that is more than 2,500 years old and there is not enough drinking water, not enough electricity, not enough roads, and our air is laden with pollution,” Dalan said. “We are surrounded with water but it is too filthy for anyone to bathe in it and our waterways are just cesspools.”

A former engineer who had never run for public office until he joined Prime Minister Turgut Ozal’s Motherland Party to run for mayor in 1983, Dalan is undaunted by the problems he reels off.

‘Problems Are Solvable’

“Some of my friends have said I was crazy to want to be mayor of Istanbul,” he said, “but I love this city, I think that for all its problems it is the , I repeat the , most beautiful city on Earth. . . . And I think its problems are solvable.”

To see what Dalan has accomplished in two years along the famed Golden Horn harbor that juts into the heart of the European part of this city is almost to become a believer.

Legend has it that the ancient city of Byzantium that later became Constantinople, then Istanbul, was founded on this site in 658 BC because of the beauty and safety of the Golden Horn.

Whatever the truth is, the Golden Horn, named for its shape and the way the setting sun glitters on its waters, has always been the soul of this city of ancient churches and mosques, an inland harbor that housed Greek, Roman and Byzantine fleets, until, under the Ottomans, it was turned into a private lake for the sultans.

Sewage Flowed

But by the time Dalan took office, the Horn, was just what he called it, a cesspool gathering industrial sludge from the small factories and warehouses that had proliferated along its banks and the sewage that has flowed down from the hilly districts of Stamboul and Pera that rise above it.

“I have always thought that to solve the problems of Istanbul one must give back the city to its people,” Dalan said. “What we are doing on the Golden Horn is just that.”

Dalan’s plan was, and continues to be, Draconian: the razing of every decaying slum, factory and warehouse along the banks of the Golden Horn to make way for a vast network of parks, public gardens and playgrounds. At a cost of about $200 million, a total of 4,000 buildings--622 of them factories owned by protesting industrialists--are being razed and about 250,000 people are being relocated into new public housing and industrial belts.

Clearing Away Slums

The process has already cleared most of the five-mile-long inlet’s right bank and work is now under way leveling the left bank where old tin and concrete factories are still belching smoke and gurgling their pollutants into the water.

The bank that has been cleared is impressive. The old city of Stamboul ends 200 to 300 yards from the bank, its ancient stone walls and architecture exposed as they have not been for centuries.

Aside from three old churches left standing as architectural monuments, the waterside is a long network of new parks already green and sprouting young saplings. Interspersed between them are brightly colored playgrounds.

Not only is Dalan clearing away the slums and factories, but he is also seeking to give his city the first real modern sewage system in its history, laying giant concrete pipes along the Horn’s banks and under the waterside parks, as well as under the two banks of the Bosporus strait, which divides the city into two parts, one in Asia and one in Europe.

Bigger Dreams

The pipes are to channel all the city’s sewage into two treatment plants, one on each continent, that will then pipe the treated sludge deep into the Sea of Marmara where, engineers say, the deep running tides will carry it into the Black Sea, 15 miles north of the city.

His dreams, which have already gained the admiration of environmentalists and loans from the World Bank and the European Community, do not stop with the Horn.

He is also at work on a series of artificial beaches and marinas along the Bosporus and a new transportation network that envisions a second soaring bridge over the Bosporus and a new sea ferry service to link various parts of the city.

Dalan’s vast schemes have not met with everyone’s satisfaction, especially those who have been inconvenienced. Critics accuse him of paying little attention to historic legacies and architectural treasures as his bulldozers clear the way for parks and playgrounds.

Popularity Grows

“It isn’t so much what Dalan has done,” said one Istanbul editor about the criticism, “but just how he has done it.”

Dalan has a ready answer to that criticism. He reached behind his desk to a bookshelf and produced a large file full of the public opinion polls he conducts regularly.

“When I was elected in 1984, I won with 48% of the vote,” he said, his blue eyes sparkling. “One year later my popularity was up to 55%; six months later, 71%.

“This poll here taken in March of this year gives me an 84% popularity rating. So I’m not worried; I’m obviously doing something right.”