The construction industry will be the most influential economic dynamic of the decades to come. The fate of urban areas, rural sites, culture, man and nature will be determined by this spree. Let’s have a close look at the legal, financial and conceptual framework that will steer the work ahead by analyzing four major tools: the Public Procurement Law, exemptions from environmental impact reports (EIA or ÇED), the termination of the autonomy of regulatory public offices and the draft law on urban transformation.
The Public Procurement Law, the financial arm of all public operations, was adopted by the coalition government in April 2002. Since then, it has been amended 18 times, so much so that the text has now been altered to the point of including no modern provisions on public procurement. Nevertheless, it administered TL 70 billion in 2010, possibly reaching TL 80 billion in 2011.
This law should be read in the context of the ending of the autonomy of the public office which runs it. Together with nine other public offices, the Public Tender Office’s relative autonomy from the government was terminated last August.
The third development involves the EIA, another essential tool of regulation and audit. As a result of fundamental amendments to regulations in April 2011, EIA requirements will not be compulsory until 2015 for projects that exist only on paper. These include the following: The Sinop and Akkuyu nuclear plants, the Amasra power plant, the third bridge over the Bosporus, the Ilısu Dam and the Gebze-Orhangazi-Izmir highway. By the same token, the treasures of biodiversity that are Artvin, Rize, Tunceli, Mersin and the Küre and Kaz mountains will be converted into investible areas. Water transfer between river basins, land reclamation projects over 10,000 square meters, transportation and infrastructure investments, water storage facilities, electricity plants, mass housing units, tourism facilities, mining sites and some factories will be exempt from EIA regulations.
The fourth move is the draft bill on urban transformation, which is soon to be referred to Parliament. The bill gives discretion to the central and local administrations over land use and real estate. Restrictive clauses on the use of lands in Forestry, Tourism incentives, Bosporus, Military zones and Coastal areas Laws are being removed by this bill.
We know that the government has not launched consultations on these measures, which will dramatically change the natural landscape and urban infrastructure of the entire country, with any individual or institution, including Parliament. Quite to the contrary, the gist of these measures is to get rid of regulatory consultation. Only a post-facto audit by the Court of Accounts will be conducted after the projects have been completed; yet the inspection will be limited to concluding whether public resources have been used properly and efficiently. There will be no turning back from the mistakes made and damage inflicted.
Common public practice in advanced democracies is not similar to ours. There is a tool called regulatory impact assessment (RIA) that was introduced to the US back in ‘70s. RIAs are a systematic approach to critically assessing the positive and negative effects of proposed and existing regulations and non-regulatory alternatives. RIA conclusions and assessments on the likely impacts of projects are forwarded to decision makers and shared with the public before implementation. In developed countries public decisions are taken through RIAs and not according to the interests of some stakeholders, or by some specialists, or by imitating similar works elsewhere, or according to the ambitions of a dominant minority. If RIAs did not exist, there would be a huge price to pay, like in the case of collapsing buildings in Turkey’s earthquake zones, the disappearing lakes and rivers of Anatolia, ruined cultural heritage across the country or Black Sea highways being swallowed by the sea. As the Sufi scholar Muhammad Hadimi once said, “Consultation is like a castle that protects a man from regret.”
Before Hadimi, the leading jurist of early Islam, Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr, reminds us: “Consultation is a practice of the Prophet, because those who take action based on consultation will not regret. Prophet Muhammad had extensive consultations with his companions. For a simple decision, he used to have consultations with ten advisors, who had wisdom, expertise, fear of god and piety.” Will anyone listen?
