March 5, 2020
IMM Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu hosted the Head of the EU Delegation to Turkey, Ambassador Christian Berger and the ambassadors to Ankara of 27 EU member countries in Istanbul.
Nihat Narin, CEO of Istanbul Investment Agency, attended the meeting and briefed the EU Ambassadors about the agency’s works and projects.
İmamoğlu, who shared information about the IMM’s short and medium term goals, said, “Firstly, Istanbul is going to be a world metropolis that is feasible for investing, working and visiting and strengthen its hand. In this sense, we will move Istanbul to the place it deserves. Secondly, always be open, honest with foreign investors and communicate on a basis of mutual gains that is solution oriented. Thirdly, change the mobility in the city and enhance its quality by increasing mass transportation investments, especially our metro investment.”
Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu visited Ankara on December 3, 2019 at the invitation of His Excellency Christian Berger, Ambassador of the European Union (EU) Delegation to Turkey. Imamoglu met with the ambassadors of 27 EU member countries, spoke to the diplomats about his “dream of a fair, green and creative Istanbul” and invited them to the city. That invitation took place today. Christian Berger, together with the ambassadors of 27 different countries met with Imamoğlu in the Tunuslu Hayreddin Pasha Mansion in Sultanahmet. Expressing his pleasure in hosting the ambassadors, İmamoğlu said, “It is a great happiness and excitement for me to meet you again after the meeting in Ankara. I told you about my dreams for Istanbul. I have conveyed our determination to make Istanbul a truly fair city, a green city and a creative city. When we say a fair city we actually mean both political justice, social justice as well as economic justice. As of 23 June 2019, following my appointment, we started the process of building local democracy in our city with democratic participation and relevant works with the concept of the highest level of political justice in the best possible way so far. We have done the job by establishing mechanisms and ensuring the participation of all citizens or their representatives living in the management of the city and IMM management decisions. ”
“WE ARE TAKING STEPS TO IMPROVE LOCAL DEMOCRACY”
İmamoglu said, “Istanbul is exhausted by many concepts,” and listed them as follows:
“Frankly, the city is fed up with crazy projects that do not prioritize people and are not humane. In this sense, Istanbul has had it with unearned income and concrete. Istanbul is also tired of the concept of ‘all-knowing manager’. We also know and feel that Istanbul is fed up with the understanding of “what I say goes in this city”. The people of Istanbul manifested this exasperation very strongly in the last elections. It gave us a valuable sign of a new beginning. ” Stating that they have discussed these issues with Istanbulites in hundreds of meetings during the last 6 months, İmamoğlu said, “We have started the establishment of mechanisms that will ensure democratic participation. We want to establish an exemplary local democracy model in Istanbul to the world. We established the first Istanbul City Council in a very short time for this purpose. We have established platforms on many issues, especially Istanbul Tourism Platform, Istanbul Earthquake Platform to strengthen the participation mechanisms, and we have organized workshops and included our people in the process. We will continue to bring this city together with bigger concepts day by day. In order to fully incorporate Istanbul into this process, we are implementing the concept of ‘Istanbul Volunteers’. This will actually be one of the most comprehensive volunteer organizations or even the first in the world. The steps that we have taken to develop local democracy, will be conducive to opening the way for the existence and empowerment of the silent majority, the oppressed people, the poor, the unemployed, woman, youth, those with different identities or beliefs in this city as a public agent.”
“OUR GOAL IS TO REDUCE URBAN POVERTY”
Emphasizing that one of the most important problems of Istanbul is urban poverty, İmamoğlu stated that they first initiated the “150 nurseries in 150 neighborhoods” practices for this purpose. Underlining that his biggest dream is to be able to establish an environment where millions of children living in this city receive equal service regardless of where they are in Istanbul, İmamoğlu said, “I hope we shall have the initial outcome of this project in April. We shall start opening these nurseries before and after April 23. Initially, we shall offer 15 nurseries as a pre-school education to our citizens. Our fundamental goal here is to spread the concept of equality to the whole city. We know that this small step will have huge results. We are also aware of the importance of providing tens of thousands of children with the opportunity to learn at that age, for the future of the city and the country.
Furthermore, we started the Halk Süt project. We distribute milk to 100 thousand children every month. These children are directly affected by urban poverty and struggle to get healthy nutrition. In addition, we have started to provide non-refundable grants to 30 thousand students who have economic needs as well as to our university students. Students studying in this city have applied to our website and started to benefit from this right. We also enable students studying in other cities to benefit from this right. As you know, our practices that give discounts for water used by small households as well as our practices that provide discounts for students and mothers in public transport are actually important steps that we have taken to ensure economic justice for urban poverty. ”
“11 CHP MUNICIPALITIES WILL COOPERATE REGARDING MIGRANTS”
İmamoğlu described the work they had done to make Istanbul fair, green and creative in detail with a slide show and recalled that one of Turkey’s most important issues was the migration problem. Expressing that municipalities do not have a wide range of authority and finance in this regard, İmamoğlu said, “In fact we have very limited means. However, we are determined to take an active role in this regard, to fulfill our humanitarian duty and to confront the problems of refugees in our city and to be useful. We started to establish a mechanism in this regard. We have strived to establish a migration dialogue program among 11 metropolitan municipalities with mayors from the Republican People’s Party in Turkey. We also have ongoing works dealing with migrants among district municipalities. We are working in coordination. We are endeavoring to reach foreign asylum seekers, children and women with different practices. In particular, strive to reduce high tension environments. We also have targets to ensure harmony between local people and asylum seekers and to support this process. Of course, we are facing one of the world’s largest refugee populations. Conveying our intention to cooperate intensively with you is an important issue here. ”
“METRO INVESTMENTS ARE OUR PRIORITY”
Sharing information about the short and medium term goals of the IMM, İmamoğlu summarized his goals as follows:
““Firstly, Istanbul is going to be a world metropolis that is feasible for investing, working and visiting and strengthen its hand. In this sense, we will move Istanbul to the place it deserves. Secondly, always be open, honest with foreign investors and communicate on a basis of mutual gains that is solution oriented. Thirdly, to change the mobility in the city and enhance its quality by increasing mass transportation investments, especially our metro investment. Another topic is the fact that since Istanbul is located on a major earthquake fault line, to be in close cooperation with all international components in planning and investments that will change the texture of the city. Considering the high added value, high technology and creative industry and appropriate human resources as well as the population consisting of children and young people, create an Istanbul that has become the center of high technology and creative industry in this field. Support high technology companies, software, design, SME and education companies at this point and to facilitate their path in Istanbul. Another important issue is to make Istanbul one of the leading cities regarding investments related to environmental, clean energy and the transformation of urban investments. Support every technological development and company in this city, taking into account the global warming problem. Get more exposure for Istanbul’s multicultural polyphonic structure; carry the climate of thousands of years of tolerance and freedom of creativity to a higher level in this city. Frankly, to make Istanbul one of the top three cities in terms of foreign visitors and put Istanbul and especially its periphery to good use and integrate the highest level of agricultural production efforts with the city. We invite you and the countries you represent to our city in economic cooperation in all these areas. ”
“TURKEY AND ISTANBUL HAVE THE CAPACITY TO OVERCOME PROBLEMS”
Imamoğlu commented that he was aware that Turkey and Istanbul had problems and said the following, “I would particularly like to announce to our Ambassador to the EU and all the esteemed ambassadors of the European countries that our nation has the capacity, capability and commitment to rapidly overcome these problems in Turkey and Istanbul that we have talked about. Actually, the paramount proof of this is the result of the election on June 23. We experienced how the people of Istanbul manifested their will to establish and sustain a city that implements law, democracy, freedom and especially the free market economy. We will be taking rapid steps in all these areas. Istanbul is a very worthy beginning and it will make us happy to see you with us during each of these valuable steps. Indeed, Turkey is the most important part of Europe. Europe is Turkey’s most important stakeholder. I want to state this again. As a result of this meeting, I propose that with the support of our Ambassador and with your participation, as IMM, we will discuss how we can work together with our ambassadors of the European Union, establish a working group and discuss this working group together with Mr. Berger and activate a commission on how we can develop cooperation.”
