President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's dream project of building a canal in Istanbul to rival those at Suez and Panama has turned into a political showdown with the city's new mayor.
Ekrem Imamoglu, who won a shock victory for the opposition in 2019 to become mayor of Turkey's largest city, says the 75 billion lira ($12.6 billion) canal is wasteful, environmentally destructive and could even increase the
earthquake risk.
"Canal Istanbul is a criminal project," he tweeted in December as he launched an "Either Canal or Istanbul" campaign and withdrew from a construction protocol signed by the previous mayor.