ISTANBUL, Turkey —
Turkey's main
airport stirred back to life on Wednesday and
Greece's under-fire prime
minister issued a formal apology as the east Mediterranean neighbors faced the
political fallout of a paralyzing blizzard.
اضافة اعلان
Public anger has been boiling over in both
countries over officials' seeming helplessness in the face of one of the
heaviest snowstorms in years.
Stranded passengers at Istanbul's
international airport — Europe's busiest — chanted "we need a hotel"
on the second day of a shutdown Tuesday that grounded flights spanning much of
the world.
The Greek government woke up on Wednesday to
newspaper headlines lamenting a "fiasco" and "mistakes that
brought chaos" to the snowy streets of the capital Athens.
"A government buried in snow," Greece's
leftist Efsyn daily said.
The problems at the Istanbul airport are a
sensitive political issue for President
Recep Erdogan ahead of an election due
by mid-2023.
Erdogan called the gleaming glass-and-steel
structure the "pride of our country and example to the world" after
making it one of the "mega-projects" of his two-decade rule.
But Erdogan's critics had long questioned
his decision to place the airport on a remote patch by the Black Sea that is
exposed to fog and strong winds.
Turkish opposition newspapers pointed out
that two top ministers had to land at the old
Ataturk Airport on their arrival
from Ankara on Tuesday.
The airport handled just a few flights on
Tuesday. Images on social media showed Turkish anti-riot police arriving in
large numbers to deal with reports of rising public anger and protests.
The airport said on Wednesday that
"operations which were temporarily suspended due to adverse weather
conditions have returned to normal".
It said 681 flights were planned for the
day.
Istanbul's opposition Mayor
Ekrem Imamoglu —
seen by analysts as one of several leading politicians coveting Erdogan's job —
also apologized "to our citizens, who became victims" of the
disruption.
But he said Erdogan had picked a
"risky" location for the airport because of weather.
Radiant sunshine in Istanbul on Wednesday
was helping efforts to clear the streets of up to 85CM (some three feet) of
snow.
The city's food delivery apps also resumed
partial service after being down for two days.
'There were mistakes'
The chaos and anger in Greece mostly
revolved around the ring road around the capital Athens.
The government was forced to call in the
army to help dig out thousands of stranded drivers.
Many abandoned their cars in snowdrifts and
walked home on foot.
Prime Minister
Kyriakos Mitsotakis offered
his "personal and sincere apology" on Wednesday to those stranded in
the snow.
He said "lessons" would be drawn
and pledged 2,000 euros ($2,300) to stranded motorists and 1,000 euros to train
passengers stuck at a station north of Athens.
"There were mistakes that must be
corrected," Mitsotakis told his cabinet ministers in televised comments.
"The snow may have come faster than
meteorologists had forecast, but I won't claim this as an excuse,"
Mitsotakis said.
Yet many major Athenian thoroughfares
remained only partially open on Wednesday.
A union representing staff of the greater
Athens authority said there were not enough heavy machinery drivers to clear
the streets.
"Our staff inspect the damage on foot,
but machinery (to repair power cables) cannot get through," the state
power provider's union leader George Adamidis said.
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