Not Monument, Death Crossroads – Breaking News – Sözcü
Abide Köprülü Junction, which turned into a lake in the flood disaster in Şanlıurfa and caused many people to lose their lives, created controversy.
While many streets and avenues were flooded in Şanlıurfa as a result of torrential rain from the evening hours the previous day, the Abide Junction underpass, which was opened three months ago, completely turned into the lake and the diver teams directed to the area started search and rescue work, while the dead bodies of 8 people have been found so far. .
Abide Köprülü Junction, which was built by the AKP’s Şanlıurfa Metropolitan Municipality and surrendered to the flood, was put into service on 3 December 2022 by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
In his speech at the opening ceremony, Erdoğan praised the work of the AKP’s Şanlıurfa Metropolitan Municipality and said, “Our metropolitan municipality has made investments with a budget of approximately 1 billion liras. He built Abide and Karakoyun interchanges and we are opening them today. Our metropolitan municipality has proven itself in the best way with the 1 million 860 thousand square meters of concrete pavement it has built, 156 kilometers of concrete roads, and the asphalt construction site it has established.”
The construction tender for the Abide Junction Bridge, which was filled with water in the rain, was held on April 6, 2022. Ohitan İnşaat won the invitation-based tender, in which only one company’s offer was considered valid. The cost of the contract was determined as 104 million 900 thousand TL.
Ohitan İnşaat, which won the tender after being rejected by five companies, belongs to Halil Bağıban, who received an award from President Erdoğan for being included in the ‘World’s Top 250 International Contractors’ list.
Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) Chamber of City Planners Şanlıurfa Provincial Representative stated that natural events turned into disasters due to lack of planning and wrong interventions to nature.
In the statement, “When we examine the macro form of the city in Şanlıurfa center, it is seen that the Cavsak stream, Karakoyun stream, Mance stream, Karaköprü-Sırrın stream and the constructions in the protection band that pass through the city center pose a danger of destruction in an earthquake, and cause flooding and loss of life in the event of flooding. We have observed that wrongly constructed transportation decisions invite disaster.
