This week, planes began landing at Istanbul’s new airport. At least the guessing game over its name is complete—as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared “Istanbul Airport” open—since this is more than can be said for the airport itself: the additional terminal buildings and runways will not be finished until 2028. Then, finally, the airport’s planned capacity of 200 million passengers per year and its size (7,594 hectares) will make it the world’s largest airport, just as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan desired. It will be far ahead of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta (103 million passengers, 1,902 hectares), Beijing Capital (95 million passengers, 1,480 hectares), Dubai (88 million passengers, 2,900 hectares), and Tokyo Haneda (85 million passengers, 1,214 hectares). A report from Turkey’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation borrows from literature to ennoble the visionary nature of Erdoğan’s signature project: “Terminal buildings resemble vertical towns similar to those imaginary towns which Italo Calvino describes in his unforgettable work Invisible Cities.” Istanbul’s new airport is thus to embody its own Invisible City.[...]
Erdoğan’s recent sharp turns in economic policy have baffled observers. He advocates lowering interest rates as an antidote to inflation, while economists say he misunderstands how interest rates work. He pushes for unassailable control over monetary policy, which analysts say undermines the independence of Turkey’s Central Bank. This summer, as Turkey’s currency value fell dramatically during a dispute with President Trump over an American pastor imprisoned in Turkey, Erdoğan commissioned a new, lakeside presidential summer palace.[...]
Over the past year, the government initiated a media campaign to allay public concern about the airport. The state-run news agency Anadolu published a video filmed at the construction site that featured laborers enjoying a game of snooker, playing musical instruments and dancing, buying coffee at a well-supplied market. But when 537 laborers protesting working conditions inside the airport were detained by police in September 2018, the news agency didn’t report the story. Subsequently, an Istanbul court ordered twenty-four construction workers and union leaders detained during the raid to be held until their trial, a measure Amnesty International called “a blatant attempt by the authorities to silence legitimate protest.” According to Human Rights Watch, at least thirty-eight workers have died in “preventable work-related accidents” at the airport site, “and many more have been badly injured.” *
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