Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) decision to cut down ancient trees on a busy street at drawn anger of the party of justice and Development (AK Party) in power. BWI officials said that the plane trees along Çırağan Street in Beşiktaş district were slaughtered car they were sick. However, the AKP party said the ‘killing of the trees’ was not necessary and they could have been ‘dealed with’ instead.
Plane trees, a few encounters back for more one century ago, adorned the street which extends from place Beşiktaş to Ortaköy district along the Bosphorus. Above past two months, all of they were removed by the municipality. Aydın Çetinkaya, a municipality official told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Thursday that new trees were planted in the area because the plane trees had dried up up and threatened the safety of people Passing by.
Officials of the Istanbul branch of the AK party criticized the decision and on Friday, the head of The party’s Beşiktaş branch, Yıldırım Turan, issued a statement to reporters on the street. Turan raised the question of if the trees had been removed to increase visibility of municipal billboards on the walls along the row of historical trees, adding that they had been sick in the past but were treated. “It seems that the municipality thought that the best solution to get rid of treatment and maintenance the costs were to uproot the trees,” he said.
Cetinkaya, who holds the post of deputy technique manager at the municipality’s urban ecological systems department, said the trees were suffering from a type of cancer exclusive to plane trees and not removing them would have infected other trees in the area as well as. “The decision covers 112 trees and is linked to a fungal disease. New trees are planted instead. All trees are located in historical preservation area and we can’t use chemical or biological intervention here. You can only fight this disease by removing the trees,” he said.
