A Cabinet decision
allowing diggers to carve out a road across state-owned virgin hillside at Karşıyaka — creating a scar visible from the coast (inset) — has come under fire.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS this week hit out at a seven-monthold Cabinet decision which has seen diggers tear into stateowned virgin hillside at Karşıyaka to allow a landowner access to his plot.
Lapta Municipality councillor and lawyer Emre Efendi aired concern that the public road being constructed might not just serve the single plot, but could also encourage more construction.
“They have destroyed the hill and nature and the proposed road is far too steep,” he said.
Green Karşıyaka community action group biologist and trekker Tuğberk Emirzade said: “You can see the massive destruction from the main road. Had they removed the earth to a suitable area it would have been much less. It must be stopped.”
A survey of residents last month by the new group, working for a “sustainable Karşıyaka”, is aimed at “preserving natural resources for future generations while satisfying the needs of the current community”.
An expat resident who asked not to be named commented: “One look at the height and the angles involved would demonstrate how crazy this is, but the bulldozer has gone in there anyway destroying hundreds of trees and bushes in the process and leaving a reddish brown wound across the hill.”
Excavators moved into the area below the mountains on the edge of the village almost a month ago following the October 2017 Cabinet decision proposed by the Interior Ministry, then headed by National Unity Party minister Kutlu Evren. The Karşıyaka Road Separation decision is an amended version of one first taken in February 2010 which states that the landowner had “obtained all necessary permissions from the relevant departments” and would bear the cost of groundwork and asphalting a public road for access to his plot.
This would be constructed on state-owned land with technical assistance and advice from the Highways Department and Land Registry.
Mr Efendi said: “Even Cabinet decisions are bound by the Good Governance Law and Girne District Office should hold a public meeting before any road project to open construction.”
However Doğuç Veysioğlu, head of the Chamber of Environ- mental Engineers, commented: “Although the Environment Law mandates Environmental Impact Assessment [Çed] reports for road projects above a certain size, no road project has ever had a Çed, even the latest LefkoşaGirne roadworks. The worst offenders are the government and we did send a warning letter to the Highways Department on this subject.”
Mr Efendi said he had alerted the Prime Ministry and Interior Ministry in mid-April but an attempt to register a case of illegal government action had been ruled “unsuitable” by the Supreme Court. Landowner Münir Hunter and Interior Ministry officials could not be reached for comment.
THIS little country could hardly have anything to compare with America’s poetic Route 66 — the legendary “Mother Road”, as John Steinbeck first called it in The GrapesofWrath . . . but it does have the Girne to Lefkoşa dual carriageway.
This vital link is currently undergoing a major upgrade and mighty fine it looks too, the section between the town and St Hilarion nearing completion on the southbound carriageway at least.
The newly laid tarmac glistens like a whip snake, a bold contrast provided by a border of golden yellow paint. But there was something else that struck me as I motored up the crawler lane on the other side; I have never seen it looking so clean. By clearing the way to make a new edge, the roadmakers have, at a stroke, vanquished the river of rubbish that ran alongside.
Now it sits like a lovely new toy, a Dinky car you don’t want to take out of its box for you know it will get scratched and broken. A shame, in a way, that any motorist be allowed upon it, for the results are inevitable. Some people here think dogs are dirty. Mine never foul their own home but there are plenty of people around us who think nothing of it.
Perhaps if we were to capture the first driver or passenger to throw a plastic bag, or bottle or take-away box on the new road and have them publicly garrotted on the Dr Fazıl Küçük roundabout, it might act as a deterrent?
I know some of you will think I’m too soft. Alternative suggestions to keep North Cyprus clean, anyone?
Locally, residents are being asked to take part in the Green Karşıyaka Project. Villagers are invited to fill a survey form, in English or Turkish. “The main goal of the project is to transform Karşıyaka into a sustainable village,” it says. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
The project coordinator, environmentalist and tour guide Tuğberk Emirzade, tells me he has had about 100 replies. The questionnaire is big on recycling,