The subject of the massive tangle-ups being experienced in Istanbul traffic day in and day out since the beginning of school made its way to the floor of the Turkish Parliament (TBMM) yesterday. Standing up to speak, Republican People's (CHP) Party MP Mehmet Sevigen said that misdirection and too much digging had slowed Istanbul traffic down to a standstill recently.

Responding to Sevigen's accusations of mishandlement on the part of local administration, Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu rose to say that is was not mismanagement but instead the rapid population growth seen since the mid 1980's which was causing the bulk of the trouble. Aksu also said that with 625 new cars joining the flow of traffic every day in the city, Istanbul police forces simply did not have the capacity to control them all. Aksu also noted that other large cities like London, New York and Berlin experienced the same sort of problems, and then referred to the many points of construction occuring all over Istanbul's roads, saying: "In order to come to a permanent solution, we have to put up with this temporary discomfort."