Istanbul removes Trump's name from metro underpass

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - The city council of Istanbul on Friday overwhelmingly voted to remove US President Donald Trump's name from a pedestrian underpass in the bustling business district of Mecidiyekoy over Trump's rhetoric against Muslims.

Its name was decided to be changed to "Mecidiyekoy Pedestrian Underpass."

The proposal was made by members of the opposition Republican Peoples' Party (CHP) in the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality's Council and received support from those of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), which rules Istanbul.

The city had given Trump's name to the underpass connecting to the metro line when the nearby Trump Towers, made up of two conjoined landmark residential and business buildings, was opened three years ago.

President Erdogan attended the inauguration ceremony for the towers.

Even before the controversies surrounding Trump's multiple campaign statements in the runup to the 2017 US presidential election that were widely perceived as openly anti-Muslim, the CHP tried to remove the name on the grounds the council never reviewed the naming process, Kurdistan 24's Istanbul bureau reported.

The official name of the towers, in which the Trump Organization has a licensing partnership, remains untouched for the time being.

In 2016, Erdogan called for changing the towers' name, saying, "I made a mistake by attending its opening."

Last month, officials from the opposition ultra-nationalist IYI (Good) Party urged Erdogan to seize the towers, privately-owned by a Turkish businessman, in retaliation to the Trump administration's sanctioning of two Erdogan Ministers over their role in the continued detention of an American pastor.

Editing by John J. Catherine