At a gathering in Belgrade in October 2017, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had for the first time given a date for his “dream project” — an artificial waterway in Istanbul — saying groundbreaking would begin the following year. He had to postpone his dream, however, as the abrupt slump of the Turkish lira in the second half of 2018 fueled crisis and stagnation in the Turkish economy. With the currency losing 30% of its value against the dollar, the Canal Istanbul project went absent from Erdogan’s top political agenda — up until December 2019.

In a speech in the presidential palace Dec. 12, Erdogan propelled the issue back to the country’s agenda, vowing to go ahead with the planned waterway, which would connect the Black and Marmara seas, running to the west of the Bosporus on Istanbul’s European side. “God willing, we will kick off Canal Istanbul by inviting bids in the soonest time possible. … We cannot shelve this project, which will make Turkey grow and strengthen its hand strategically,” he said. Furthermore, he declared, the project would have a political aspect. “I am not using it now, but when the time comes, we’ll be using that as well. God willing, Canal Istanbul will be a big success internationally with that political aspect, too,” he said.

The president has thus far kept mum on what that aspect is, and none of the journalists allowed access to Erdogan have asked him the question. So the political aspect that will make Canal Istanbul a “big success internationally” remains ambiguous, along with many other ambiguities surrounding the project.

Erdogan had first unveiled the project in 2011 during his campaign for the general elections that year, calling it a “crazy project.” His assertion that the plan is not shelved comes also as an answer to an Al-Monitor article from October 2018 that quizzed whether Erdogan would go ahead with the project despite the economic crisis gripping Turkey. The article had concluded that, “In theory, Erdogan can still realize Canal Istanbul but with one prerequisite: finding a banker crazy enough to finance his ‘crazy project.’”