Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s (IBB) decision to chop down ancient trees on a busy street has drawn the ire of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). IBB officials have said the plane trees along Çırağan Street in the Beşiktaş district were felled as they were diseased. However, the AK Party has said the “tree massacre” was unnecessary and that they could have been "treated" instead.
Plane trees, some dating back to more than a century ago, adorned the street stretching from Beşiktaş Square to the Ortaköy neighborhood along the Bosporus. Over the past two months, all of them have been removed by the municipality. Aydın Çetinkaya, a municipality official, told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Thursday that new trees were being planted in the area because the plane trees had dried up and threatened the safety of people passing by.
Officials from the AK Party's Istanbul branch have criticized the decision and on Friday, the head of the party's Beşiktaş branch, Yıldırım Turan, released a statement to reporters on the street. Turan raised the question of whether the trees had been removed to increase the visibility of the municipality's billboards on the walls alongside the row of historic trees, adding that they had been sick in the past but were treated. “It appears that the municipality thought the best solution to get rid of treatment and maintenance costs was to uproot the trees,” he said.
Çetinkaya, who serves as deputy technical manager at the municipality's urban ecological systems department, has said that the trees suffered from a type of cancer exclusive to plane trees and not removing them would have infected other trees in the area as well. "The decision covers 112 trees and is related to a fungal disease. New trees are being planted instead. All trees are located in a historic preservation area and we cannot use chemical or biological intervention here. You can only fight this disease by removing the trees," he said.
