Turkey’s surface area ‘expands with reclaimed lands’

ANKARA

The country’s surface area has expanded by 2.8 square kilometers with reclaimed lands, including the recently inaugurated Rize-Artvin Airport, daily Milliyet has reported.

“Some 2.8 square kilometers have been added to the official surface area of 783,562 square kilometers,” the daily wrote on May 17.

Rize-Artvin Airport, which opened for commercial business on May 14, is the second airport built on a reclaimed area after Ordu-Giresun Airport.

Located off the coast of the Black Sea province of Rize’s Pazar district, Rize-Artvin Airport covers an area of 4,500 square meters, filled with at least 85 million tons of rocks.

Some 30 million tons of rock were used in the construction of the Ordu-Giresun Airport, the world’s third artificial island airport, located some 19 kilometers away from Ordu and 25 kilometers from Giresun city centers in the Black Sea region.

“Not only airports, but Turkey has also used the reclaiming technique for coastal roads and national parks,” the daily said, highlighting that the reclaimed areas exist mostly in Istanbul.

“In the 1980s, local authorities filled the sea to obtain land in the districts of Avcılar, Pendik, Bakırköy and Üsküdar,” the daily expressed.

But the district of Maltepe, with a national park on a million-square-meter land, and the neighborhood of Yenikapı, with an agora built on a 673,000-square-meter area, take the lead on the reclaimed surfaces in Istanbul.

“Turkey’s surface area basically increased Maltepe and Yenikapı formations,” the daily added.