TURKEY: Ever since the first sections of the Istanbul metro opened for revenue service almost three decades ago, station entrances across the municipally-operated network have been marked clearly by an easily-identifiably logo — a capital letter M, merged with an arrow pointing downwards to the station below.
However, that may be set to change, with the national government taking responsibility for several projects across the rapidly-expanding network. In a bizarre ‘war of signs’, the Ministry of Transport is attempting to rebrand the lines that it has funded directly, in order to differentiate them from those developed by the municipality, IBB.
During September, the ministry began rolling out its rival logo at station entrances on the partly-completed Line M11. This consists of a single capital U, standing for ‘Ulaştırma Bakanlığı’, the Turkish for Transport Ministry. The intention is that this logo will also be used across the six other lines for which the ministry has assumed responsibility.
These include two branches of M11 connecting Istanbul’s new main airport with Gayretepe to the east and the major railway interchange at Halkalı to the west, Line M10 line between Pendik and the city’s second airport, Sabiha Gökçen, two extensions to Line M3 linking the Bakirköy İDO seabus terminal with Kirazlı and Kayaşehir to Başakşehir Hospital, and an as yet un-numbered line between Altunizade and Çamlıca Bosnia Bulvar.
Minister of Transport & Infrastructure Adil Karaismailoğlu defended the move, insisting that it was important that people in Istanbul should understand which organisation was responsible for developing which lines. He rejected the suggestion that having two different signs to mark metro stations would be confusing for visitors. ‘It doesn’t matter, it says “Metro” under it’, he insisted, pointing out that U also stands for Underground or U-Bahn.
However, IBB spokesperson Murat Ongun insisted that the logo for Istanbul’s metro had been ‘M’ since 1992, tweeting that ‘you cannot introduce discrimination into the services in Istanbul’.
Political stand-off
The metro rebranding essentially stems from Turkey’s ruling AK Party losing control of Istanbul to the opposition party CHP in the local elections of 2019; this was seen as a major blow for President Tayyip Erdogan, whose political career took off when he was elected mayor of the city in 1993.
The loss was blamed on Turkey’s financial crisis in 2018. That saw Ankara attempt to rein its current account deficit and relieve pressure on the Turkish Lira by slashing budgets for infrastructure projects, including many of Istanbul’s ongoing metro and tramway expansion schemes.
With the financial crisis over, newly-elected opposition Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu has been able to boost his popularity by restarting the stalled projects, most recently with the help of a US$580m Eurobond issue finalised in 2020.
The government’s response was to take control of seven projects totalling 103 route-km, which the transport ministry aims to complete by the time of Turkey’s next presidential and parliamentary elections at the end of 2023. All of these are expected to be branded with the new U logo. However, Karaismailoğlu denied that the ministry would attempt to rebrand the existing lines operated by the municipality or those that the city administration is developing.
