‘The Gateway’, broadcast on CNN International, presented its final program from Istanbul. The guest of the program, Minister of Transport Binali Yildirim talked about Istanbul. Indicating the importance of the Bosphorus and the Marmaray Project in the program, Yildirim said “The fact that 87% of trade and transportation is provided by sea is a good indicator for our understanding of the importance of Istanbul in shipping trade. Currently, the traffic through the Bosporus comprises large container vessels and crude oil tankers from the North to the South, as well as our local traffic with 2.500 small vessels transporting more than 400 thousand people every day. We overloaded the Bosphorus.
Through Marmaray, 150 thousand people will cross over from Asia to Europe, which will add security to the local traffic”. On the other hand, he talked about the difficulties encountered during the construction of Marmaray: “We have overcome most of the difficult part. The current difficulty is that we need to preserve the historical section. The tunnel passes through a historical site. Each piece of land is examined by archaeologists. We stop when we are told to stop. We lost five years because of that, but we are not unhappy about it; we have made a contribution to the revelation of the history of the city. Before Marmaray, the history of Istanbul was known to date back 2500 years. But we understood with the archaeological excavation activities that the city has a history of 8500 years.