President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge and Malkara-Çanakkale Highway Opening Ceremony.
Here are some headlines from Erdogan's speech:
“We are together to inaugurate the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, which we see as a ruby necklace we wear on the Çanakkale Strait.
We are addressing the 107 Çanakkale Bridge, to which we dedicate the glorious victory of our ancestors 1915 years ago, for the sake of a crescent, O Lord, to history as glorious as the setting sun, to the ancestors.
You know, we always say to build a bridge from the past to the horse, today we are putting this word into practice both in word and spirit.
I wish the Çanakkale Bridge in 1915 to be beneficial to our country, our nation, our city, and all humanity.
But remember, 140 years ago, Sultan Abdulhamid Han had done the old works of those bridges that I just mentioned, and he had made the preparations.
Abdulhamid Han's heirloom, which could not be realized due to the wars that the Ottomans went through one after the other, had the privilege of realizing some of these projects.
In 1915, Çanakkale Bridge has different meanings with each of its technical features, and now, as the People's Alliance, we have been blessed to open it. 1915, at the beginning of our bridge's name, is the year we won the Naval Victory in Çanakkale, the scene of the bloodiest and most exemplary struggles of the 1st World War.
The height of the tower at 318 meters means the 18th of March. 3 March 18 marks today. If its middle span is 2023 meters, it is the sign of 100, the 2023th anniversary of the establishment of our republic, and our big goals.
Therefore, a century ago, our ancestors etched the phrase 'Canakkale is impassable' into history with his blood. What was that crusader and crescent struggle and our ancestors' henna lambs, under the presidency of Gazi Mustafa Kemal, those henna lambs under the presidency of Pasha, Seyit Corporal, said yes, 'Canakkale is impassable' and wrote history here.
Are we here today as the grandchildren of those who fought in Çanakkale? We are here, but today we are taking another step. Here we are opening the 18 March Çanakkale Bridge. With this bridge we built, we re-inscribed the same message, the legacy of our ancestors, into history with the possibilities of engineers and technology. And we just heard it with the South Korean Prime Minister, you saw it excited, didn't you? Have you seen your love? Back then, when there was no agreement in Korea, here's what our elders did. They went to war in Korea and there were martyrs. Right now, of course, there are people there. These are not ordinary events, they are love.
I believe that we will increase our trade volume to 20 billion dollars as soon as possible, and we are taking our steps with this solidarity on our bridges with their investments.
We have shown to friends and foes that there is nothing that Turkey cannot achieve with the Turkish nation's wishes. Undoubtedly, we are not only talking about this bridge in ubra, we have a huge transportation project in front of us that will connect Istanbul to Balıkesir via Tekirdağ and Çanakkale.
We are opening today's 101 kilometer highway stretching from Malkara to Çanakkale. The one who knows business is the one who wields a sword. On this road, which is one of the busiest vehicle routes in Turkey, there was ferry transportation between Lapseki and Gallipoli. This is a place where the ferry line is expected for hours and then one and a half hours can be crossed. Now the same journey will be completed in just 1915 minutes over the 6 Çanakkale Bridge.
We laid the foundation of our bridge on March 4, 18 years ago. Our companies rolled up their sleeves together with their South Korean business partners.
Turkey has surpassed Japan, which has the longest bridge in the world in terms of mid-span, and has ranked first in this field. Of course, I would like to remind you that three of the top 10 bridges in the world in terms of mid-span length are in our country.
The part of our highway project that surrounds it with its tunnels, which we will open today, has an investment cost of 2,5 billion Euros.
So what will this 2,5 billion Euro investment bring us? Do you know what will be the annual gain of our country with this investment only from time, fuel consumption and less carbon emission? 415 million euros.
Calculations made for the ease and comfort of traveling between our cities in a safe and comfortable way indicate that this project will contribute 5,3 billion Euros in production to our economy, 118 thousand people and an additional 2,4 billion Euros in national income.
Our 1915 Çanakkale Bridge is the latest work we built with the build-operate-transfer model called public-private cooperation. Hopefully this will continue, we will not stay here.
Although this model has a history of 30 years in our country, the most successful examples emerged in our period. 134 countries in the world use this model in their investments in different sectors. We are ranked 3rd in Europe and 13th in the world in terms of public-private partnership model performance.
Germany has built a highway project of 4 billion dollars in the last 15 years based on public-private cooperation. A significant part of the 1,5 trillion dollar infrastructure projects announced by the USA has been realized with this model.
Public-private cooperation projects are also quite common in Asian and Middle Eastern countries. With this method, Turkey has realized an investment of 20 and a half billion dollars in the last 37 years only in the transportation sector.
In other words, it has achieved this by bringing it from outside, not from our own head. Do you know what the contribution of the projects we made during this period to our national values? 395 billion dollars contribution to production, 838 billion dollars contribution to employment. If 1 million people were left to make the same investments with only budgetary resources, we would have to wait for decades.
We have completed strategically important high-budget projects like here in a short time with public-private cooperation and put them into service. We are planning to realize the same models for a significant part of the infrastructure projects in our 2053 vision, the preparations of which are still in progress.
Our works and projects have taken their place in our development history as works that provide added value to our country and income to our budget. In fact, I was planning to tell you the investment and maintenance costs guarantees of each of these public-private cooperation projects and the benefits they will provide to the state, but I just want to say this in order not to keep you waiting for a long time in this cold weather. Turkey has completed its long-term investments in a short time by developing this model with lessons from the periods when only her grandson could see the completion of the work, on which her father laid the foundation.
Even in the period of guaranteed operation, these works, which are public resources or revenues, will continue to provide profit to the state for many years afterwards.
For example, Istanbul Airport, which employed 10 thousand people by completing an investment of 200 billion Euros without leaving a single penny from the budget, exceeded the number of guaranteed passengers in its first year and brought an additional income of 22 million Euros to the public. We should not forget that the divided roads and highways serve not only the safety of our people, but also life, by reducing the accidents by eighty percent despite the 100% increase in vehicle traffic. To put it simply, we offer projects that will take a long time to complete with budget opportunities, which we cannot do with cash in this model, in a short time and in installments.
This is how we build hospitals, this is how we built roads, and we will continue to do so. These projects provide very important support to the development of Turkey with the economic and social momentum they create in the regions where they are implemented, as well as the near emission gains they provide.
The global economic system has been reorganized, and these projects have a huge share in our country's investment, manpower, production and export potential.
Asking those who oppose this model what proposals they have for making the investments necessary for the development of the country alone will be enough to show how empty they are, how unprepared they are and why they burn you.
That's why we say that we do not just open a bridge between the two sides of the Bosphorus here. Here, we are building a growing bridge of development between Turkey's present and its future.
Today, we reach a new link in the path of becoming a symbol of peace, prosperity, justice and fairness in Turkey's growth, strengthening and development region and in the world.
I wish the Çanakkale Bridge in 1915 to be beneficial to our city, our country, our nation, our region, and the world.
We set the toll fee as 200 liras. It will be free for a week.”
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