Despite all debates in the parliament between the ruling AK
Party and the opposition parties, the new environmental assessment
regulation has been published in the Official Gazette dated
November 25, 2014 and numbered 29186
("Regulation").
The Regulation provides that railroad projects which do not
exceed 100 kilometers in length will be exempt from environmental
assessment procedures.
According to the Regulation, dredging projects which are
conducted to dredge materials in excess of 3.000.000 m3 will also
be exempt from environmental assessment procedures.
Before the Regulation came into force, the environmental
assessment procedures for wind power plants were determined based
on the number of turbines in a wind power plant rather than their
production capacity. However, the Regulation now stipulates that
the environmental assessment procedures of wind power plants shall
be determined according to their production capacity. In other
words, wind power plants
