A few months after they competed for the seat of the Istanbul municipality, Minister of Environment, Urban Planning and Climate Change Murat Kurum met Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu on Tuesday. Kurum shared a photo of the meeting on his social media account. The ministry said Imamoğlu requested the meeting.
During the meeting that lasted for about one and a half hours, Kurum and Imamoğlu discussed the urban transformation project and protecting Istanbul’s natural beauties. Kurum said in his post that they exchanged views on urban transformation essential for Istanbul’s preparedness for a potential earthquake and for preserving the natural wealth of Istanbul and Bosporus. He said his meetings with local administrators would continue.
Murat Kurum served as minister of environment, urban planning and climate change from 2018 and 2023. He was nominated as the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) candidate in the March 31 municipal elections, challenging the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) mayor Imamoğlu. Imamoğlu, who won the seat in the 2019 elections after a long AK Party rule in Istanbul, defeated Kurum in the heated election that has seen the AK Party losing some strongholds to the CHP. Kurum was reappointed as minister in July. The election’s outcome, however, triggered a new "normalization" process between two rival parties, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meeting CHP Chair Özgür Özel at least twice while the CHP’s shadow ministers held talks with their counterparts in the Cabinet.
The urban transformation program that Kurum referred to is an ambitious program run by the government that offers incentives to owners of old buildings that cannot endure a major disaster to replace it with new, sturdy ones. Transformation is vital for a country sitting on a number of active fault lines, especially after the 2023 earthquakes in southern Türkiye which claimed thousands of lives.
During his municipal election campaign, Kurum promised the removal of all buildings at risk of damage and the construction of 650,000 housing units instead of old buildings that cannot endure disasters in Istanbul and offered to cover half of the expenses for renewal or reconstruction from the municipality’s coffers. Istanbul last suffered from the 1999 earthquake which killed thousands in northwestern Türkiye though most parts of the city except a district on its European side were spared from devastation. However, seismologists often warn that an earthquake at least at a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale may hit the city in the near future and trigger tsunamis on the city north of the Sea of Marmara.
The Imamoğlu administration has been under fire recently over what their critics say is a failure to protect the Bosporus. Crews from Kurum’s ministry demolished last week illegal additions to a Russian oligarch-owned villa on the Bosporus following backlash over the negligence of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB).
The IBB has been accused of allowing illegal construction atop the verdant hills of Istanbul’s two high-profile districts overlooking the Bosporus, one in the European Sarıyer district, said to belong to Halk TV owner Cafer Mahiroğlu and another in the Asian-side Üsküdar district’s Vaniköy neighborhood.
Media reports said Russian oligarch Boris Borisenko, a representative of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in Türkiye, secured the IBB's permission, claiming he would do interior repairs for the illegal villa in Vaniköy. He instead constructed seven separate buildings on the site over six months, cutting down over 100 trees, including mature beech trees, in the process.
In its defense, the IBB said it issued a simple repair permit for Borisenko’s request, arguing the work exceeded the scope of this permit. According to the municipality’s statement, the site in Vaniköy contained two reinforced concrete buildings with four independent sections each, all of which had valid occupancy permits. Previous structures on the parcel were demolished, and the new construction sought repair and renovation permits from the IBB. The IBB, however, was accused of negligence when it was revealed that its officials had conducted weekly audits on-site but had not intervened with the illegal constructions.
While the Justice Ministry launched an investigation into the incident, the Ministry of Environment, Urban Planning and Climate Change sealed off the construction site and sent a letter to the IBB to demolish the illegal additions since the Bosporus region falls under the municipality’s planning department’s jurisdiction.
Commenting on their meeting on Wednesday, Imamoğlu hailed Kurum's "positive approach." "We spoke about Istanbul's outstanding problems and talked about joint steps we can take on urban transformation. The minister invited the ministry's relevant officials for each issue we talked about. I thank him for his understanding approach," he told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Istanbul. He said he was also seeking to hold talks with other ministers and hoped he can get an appointment soon.