The chopping of 158 trees within a crossroads construction in the northwestern province of Yalova stirred controversy.
Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Melda Onur sent a tweet criticizing the municipality affiliated with her party:
“As we stand behind Gezi and Validebağ and try to protect olives in Yırca, how can we defend this?”
“…It is honor to apologize in front of our people when we have a mistake.”
Yalova Platform member Hakim Menteş said the following: “We are against turning this place into a concrete. 6,000 olive trees in Yırca were cut, saying that there was a need for thermic power plants. This has no difference. It is no different from chopping thousands of trees for the third bosporus in Istanbul, either. Maybe the scale is smaller, but the mentality is the same. We are always against cutting of trees without an adequate search for alternatives and we will always be. This is such a shame and a sad day for the city of Yalova."
Yalova Municipality, in response, made a statement, claiming that the crossroads have been planned in order to response demands on the improvement of traffic and their consultations to Forest Authorities didn’t consider the aforementioned trees as a forest area.
“Being aware of all the inconvenience technical conditions bring up, our municipality has the capacity and environment awareness to make amends multifold considering the public interest,” the statement said. (NV/BM)
* Click here to read the article in Turkish.
