International Meeting 2019

Beşiktaş Mayor Rıza Akpolat Gathered with Mission Representatives!

The Beşiktaş Mayor Mr. Rıza Akpolat gathered with consul generals, consuls and other diplomatic missions representing their countries in Istanbul. This Beşiktaş International Meeting Event, which was organized as part of the European Local Democracy Week (ELDW) events for the first time this year, is intended to be organized regularly every year during the week.

Hosted by the Beşiktaş Mayor Mr. Rıza Akpolat on Tuesday, October 15, the Beşiktaş International Meeting Event was attended by some 70 mission representatives, mostly consul generals, in office in Istanbul.

Akpolat: We are going to make Beşiktaş again the first place that springs to mind for participation, environment and international gatherings

Welcoming the guests personally at the door, the Beşiktaş Mayor Rıza Akpolat then gave the opening speech and addressed several crucial topics; especially the climate crisis, participatory municipal practices, international sister city relations as well as international festivals and events. Mayor said: ‘’We started our office at the Beşiktaş Municipality adopting a supra-party understanding, with an effort to provide equal services to each and every neighborhood and street. As a Mayor, I attach particular importance to sister city relations. We currently have 6 foreign sister cities. One of the things we are going to do will be to increase that number with the purpose of achieving common interest on specific themes. Again we have a project to make Beşiktaş the center of international events, organizing a different festival every week. At this point we expect your ideas and help to bring world-famous festivals to Beşiktaş. Your kind cooperation and support will be valuable for us in order to further integrate Beşiktaş to the world as part of all our efforts in these areas by both utilizing international funds more, and also increasing the number of our joint projects. The people of Beşiktaş have a high environmental awareness. And one of the primary commitments we made during our campaign was to reduce our carbon footprint. As a matter of fact, this was one of the issues we approached after taking office. Actually, I have been using my personal hybrid car since the beginning of my electoral campaign and I still use it. We immediately started to change our municipal cars with hybrid ones and aim to change all of them gradually. Electric scooters are used all around Beşiktaş now. As the Beşiktaş Municipality, we took another important step in this regard about the gifts that we give. Instead of material ones, we donate saplings to various afforestation areas in our city and country. For instance, we donated a sapling for each of you in the İzmir afforestation area. And we kindly request that you plant in your garden the black pine seeds that you can see now at the top of the recyclable pencils on your tables, as a remembrance of this day.‘’.

Mayor Akpolat also mentioned the project aimed at making Beşiktaş the very center of tourism and gastronomy. After Mayor’s speech, the guests asked their questions and stated their requests to Mayor Akpolat, exchanging ideas. Mr. Mayor answered the questions collectively and told the consular representatives that the Beşiktaş Municipality is always ready to listen to them and eager to cooperate at any topic with the purpose of creating awareness and coming up with solutions at various matters. Mayor also gave the good news that all the major problems Beşiktaş and in general Istanbul currently face, mainly the traffic issue, will be handled in cooperation with the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality through the Joint Table Meetings with Mayor Mr. Ekrem İmamoğlu. Mr. Akpolat also stated that the Beşiktaş Municipality is the first municipality to start using the Hamidiye bottled water after the local elections on June 23, 2019. In the meantime the guests were served Hamidiye water.

The Beşiktaş International Meeting event, which will be turned into a tradition being organized every year by the Beşiktaş Municipality, ended with a family photo.