Court cancels municipality’s tender: ‘Validebağ will remain a grove’

* Photo: Validebağ Defense / Twitter

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The İstanbul 11th Administrative Court has cancelled the tender for the Üsküdar Municipality's "Rehabilitation Project". The ruling has noted that the launch of the project will "lead to irrecoverable damages."

According to the court ruling, "there is no compliance with the law in the Protection/Rehabilitation and Landscaping/Construction Work EPPP tender", which was the subject matter of the case. The court has recalled that the tender was for a project "based on Commission decisions, the unlawfulness of which was concluded by court rulings, and on the development plans, the execution of which was halted during the litigation process."

Onur Cingil, the lawyer of the case, has made a brief statement on social media and said, "We have fortunately protected the Validebağ Grove! We have made the Üsküdar Municipality's tender, which would mean the plunder of the Validebağ Grove, cancelled. [...] May this be a gift to Üsküdar, İstanbul and our country! Validebağ is a grove and will remain a grove!"

What happened?

The Validebağ Grove was certified as a "natural protected area" in 1999. Transferred to the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İMM) for two years in 2014, the grove started facing interventions in 2014.

Even though there were several mosques around the grove, a mosque was constructed at one of the entrances of the grove.

A "Nation's Garden" project was drafted for the grove in 2018; but this project was not realized thanks to the struggle of volunteers. In March 2020, the Üsküdar Municipal Council had an "emergency" meeting and allocated 261 thousand square meters of the Validebağ Grove, which belonged to the Treasury, to the Üsküdar Municipality for purposes of care and maintenance.

Nearly a year later, Minister of Environment and Urbanization Murat Kurum visited the grove on April 24 and announced on social media that they would introduce the "Landscaping and Rehabilitation Project" in the Validebağ Grove in cooperation with the Üsküdar Municipality.

In his speech on June 18, he said that the project would start in the grove on June 21. Shortly afterwards, the people of the neighborhood started keeping watch in the grove to prevent the project.

With the 17.6-million-lira tender, it was planned to turf an area of 88 decares. The İstanbul 11th Regional Administrative Court, in its decision dated July 30, ruled for the stay of execution by indicating that "irrecoverable damages might be caused by the de facto interventions to be made into the related immovable due to the action, the unlawfulness of which was proven."

Even though there were three decisions of stay of execution against the project, construction equipment entered the grove on September 2, 2021 to open the road foreseen in the project. The excavators were prevented by the people keeping watch in the grove.

About the Validebağ Grove

Located among the Altunizade, Koşuyolu and Acıbadem neighborhoods in Üsküdar in the Anatolian side of İstanbul, the Validebağ Grove hosts 130 of the 485 bird species, 31 of over 400 butterfly species in Turkey and 200 of 2,000 herbaceous plants in İstanbul. 101 tree, arbuscule and bush species have been identified in the grove, which is a Grade 1 Natural Site Area. Some of these trees are monumental trees. (TP/SD)