Validebağ Grove | Üsküdar Municipality’s appeal dismissed by court

* Photo: Validebağ Volunteers / Twitter

Click to read the article in Turkish

The İstanbul Regional Administrative Court has dismissed the appeal of the Üsküdar Municipality against the decision of stay of execution given by the İstanbul 6th Administrative Court for the development plan of the Validebağ Grove, a natural and historical site area.

After the administrative court gave a decision of stay of execution for the Master Development Plan for Protection Scale 1/ 5,000 and for the Master Development Plan for Protection Scale 1/ 1,000, the Üsküdar Municipality lodged an appeal against this local court decision.

The İstanbul Regional Administrative Court has rejected this appeal, indicating that "the nature of the issues mentioned in the petition of appeal does not require the removal of the stay of execution." The court rejected the appeal by a unanimous vote on September 9.

The Validebağ Volunteers have announced the court decision on their social media account. Recalling that three decisions of stay of execution have been given and two appeals against these decisions have been rejected, they have said, "We trust justice because we are right."

CLICK - Construction equipment enters Validebağ 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)