Istanbul: European busiest airports are closed in Istanbul on Monday while the school and vaccination center closed in Athens as a rare snowstorm covered by plots in eastern Mediterranean, causing blackouts and traffic.
Closure of Istanbul Airport – where the roof of one of the cargo terminals collapsed under heavy snow, causing no disgracies based on stretching from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and Asia.
Travel officials told AFP it marked the first shutdown of the structure of the glass and steel because it replaced Istanbul’s old Ataturk Airport as a new center for Turkey Airlines in 2019.
The first winter snow creates a pleasant atmosphere in the entire ancient mosque box Istanbul, where children build snowmen and tourists pose for selfies.
But it proved a big headache for 16 million residents of Turkey’s largest city, where cars were hijacked in each other slipping on steep and hollow streets and the highway turned into a parking lot.
The Office of the Governor of Istanbul warns the driver they will not be able to enter the city of Thrace – a region that stretches in the Turkish Europe to the Western border with Bulgaria and Greece.
The shopping center closed early, the food delivery service was closed and the “Simit” bagel kiosk which iconic city stands empty because suppliers cannot pass through snow.
The storm was blocking the streets in the middle and southeast Turkey before crossing into the neighboring Syria, where he stacked more misery in the northern refugee camps that were seriously injured.
Istanbul airport serves more than 37 million passengers last year, became one of the most important air hubs in the world.
But the critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had long questioned his decision to place the airport in a remote patch along the black sea coast which was often covered with fog in winter.
“Because of the detrimental conditions, all flights have been suspended for air safety,” said the airport in a statement, posting images on Twitter Snowbrough circling airplanes.
The airport extended his suspension twice, said Monday night that the service would not be continued before 4:00 a.m. (0100 GMT) Tuesday.
‘Everything is frozen’
Most of the main Turkish institutions remain open.
But in Greece, where overnight temperatures dropped to -14 degrees Celsius (6.8 degrees Fahrenheit), a storm suspended parliamentary sessions and forced schools and vaccination centers to close in Athens.
Hundreds of motorists stuck in the car around the capital – many of them vent their anger at the TV station – even though there was a police attempt to close the toll road to the north of the city.
“My wife has nothing to eat since morning. We have a bottle of small water between us,” a driver who identified himself only when Christos said TV Star Private.
“Everything is frozen stiff.”
Army, firefighters and police began working to free motorists who were stranded in the afternoon.
The Greek climate crisis and Civil Protection Minister Christos Stylianides apologized for the chaos and blame the company that manages the toll road not to make it remain open.
A cold snap with sub-zero temperatures and the last strong winds hit Athens in February 2021, killing four people on Evia and Crete Island and left tens of thousands of households without electricity for days.
Kostas Lagouvardos, the research director at the Athens National Observatory, told Ant1 TV that the capital had not seen back-to-back winters like this since 1968.
Unusual snow falls in several Aegean marine islands, isolate several mountain villages in Andros, Naxos and Tino, and include the beach in Mykonos, on the summer party island.