Turkey’s Housing Development Administration of Turkey (TOKİ) announced the cancellation of three out of five tenders for housing projects in Istanbul’s Arnavutköy district.
TOKİ cited lack of proposals as the reason for the cancellation of one of the tenders, according to a query over the EKAP database for public purchases.
A tender scheduled for Nov. 23 was cancelled on Nov. 29 due to lack of interest. Another tender scheduled for Nov. 25 was cancelled on Dec. 1, while the third one scheduled for Dec. 29 was cancelled before its planned date, on Dec. 7, according to Sözcü newspaper.
The remaining two tenders were carried out on Oct. 6 and 7, and while they have not been cancelled, they are still listed as “closed for bids, under consideration”.
City council members from the opposition were already questioning the logic of the Environment and Urbanism Ministry announcing tenders for plots that were still classified as fields and had not been rezoned, Nadir Ataman, member of the Istanbul metropolitan and Bakırköy district municipal councils told Sözcü.
“Everybody has understood by now that the government is on its way out. They cannot hold the tenders, or complete their plans,” Ataman said.
The five tenders encompassed a total of 3,100 apartments, and TOKİ had announced before that the projects were for social housing.
Kanal Istanbul has received much criticism from opposition groups and professional organisations, who say the artificial waterway connecting the sea of Marmara with the Black Sea would create an environmental catastrophe and worsen problems for the 16 million strong population of megacity Istanbul.
Ahval