LIVE: Turkey breaks ground on third Istanbul airport

Despite environmental impact and financing questions, Turkey breaks the ground for Istanbul’s third airport with a ceremony that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan attends Turkey holds a groundbreaking ceremony on June for the $30 billion new Istanbul airport that is slated to become one of the world’s biggest despite lingering environmental and funding problems that threaten the planned construction schedule. 

The beginning of the construction for Istanbul’s third airport, which is being built in a forested area in the northern section of the city, will be marked with a ceremony that will be attended by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

A consortium of five Turkish construction firms, Limak-Kolin-Cengiz-Mapa-Kalyon, made the winning bid of 22.1 billion euros ($30 billion) last May to build and operate the airport for 25 years. The site is expected to have a capacity for 150 million passengers when it is completed.

The construction cost for the flight hub, which is slated to be fully completed by the end of 2018, is estimated to be around 10.2 billion euros.

Here is the live footage from the ceremony:

Looming setbacks

The airport project that has been enthusiastically championed as one of the milestones in Turkey’s development process by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has been facing several setbacks, with expected environmental damage triggering the most anger from society.

Dozens of lakes in the area and habitat, as well as the forests, will all be razed to make for the mega project, which will tie into a third bridge.

Most recently, on June 4 local media reported that works to drain off some 70...