Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday inaugurated the first high-speed train link between Ankara and Istanbul in his latest ambitious grand engineering project, but arrived late after a technical problem on the maiden trip. Erdogan boasted that the new high speed train link was a symbol of a new Turkey but promptly himself suffered an all too familiar commuter experience when the train made an unscheduled halt for half an hour.
The new line between Turkey's two biggest cities, which should slash journey times by around a half to 3.5 hours, has already been hit by repeatedly delayed opening dates and accidents. The line does not yet terminate in the centre of Istanbul, but on the Asian side of the Bosphorus in the suburb of Pendik, which can take up to two hours to access from the heart of the city.
But the premier, who is standing in presidential elections on August 10, turned the opening of the line into another leg of his campaign, making speeches at stops along the way. "We are a country which dreams and which makes its dreams come true," Erdogan told crowds in Eskisehir, the half-way stop on the way to Istanbul.
Comments
Comments are closed.