Turkey is going to be celebrating 2023 with a city that has two seas running through it. Plans to build a new waterway through Istanbul have been announced this week and are due to be completed by 2023, in time to celebrate the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the centenary of the Turkish Republic.

The new waterway will be named ‘Canal Istanbul’ and will link the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, which leads to the Aegean Sea. The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who announced the plans, has called the waterway a ‘crazy and magnificent project’.

The waterway will be built through Bosporus, which is currently a through route for tanker ships carrying oil, petroleum and chemicals to and from Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and Russia. This area has previously been the scene for many accidents, including sinking of ships and oil spillages. The PM wants this area to become a go-to point for water sports and boat trips, and he says that the area will go from being an environmental disaster zone to a having zero traffic.

The new Sea will be 28-31 miles long, 25 metres deep and 150 metres wide.

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