The Greek army is helping to remove cars on a snowy road

Greek soldiers try to free a snow-covered car on the Attica-Odos highway after heavy snowfall in Athens on Tuesday, January 26, 2022. (Thanassis Stavrakis / AP)

ATHENS, Greece The Greek army and municipal crews on Wednesday removed hundreds of cars stranded in snow for three days on the road connecting Athens to the international airport as authorities struggled to clear closed highways and restore electricity to darkened parts of the capital.

Although road and air traffic has returned to normal in Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, snow still covers much of the 16-million-strong metropolis.

Heavy snow this week caused major disruptions in Greece and neighboring Turkey, disrupting flights, closing highways and causing power outages.

On Monday, snow covered Athens and much of the country, with thousands of drivers stranded on major roads in the Greek capital for hours, many forced to spend the night in their cars.

While flights to Istanbul Airport, one of Europe’s busiest travel destinations, have been suspended, countless drivers have been stranded on highways around Istanbul for hours. The airport said on Wednesday that it was slowly returning to normal operations with the planned 681 landings and landings.

However, the snowstorm re-ignited discussions over the location of Istanbul Airport, one of the mega-projects of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which replaced Ataturk International Airport as the city’s main airport during its opening in 2019.

Critics say the location of the new airports near the Black Sea is not suitable for the airport. There is also no metro service, which makes access difficult, and there is no hotel nearby to accommodate indoor passengers. Hundreds of passengers protested at the airport on Tuesday, chanting slogans: We need a hotel!

In Greece, many city streets were still impassable on Wednesday. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis personally and sincerely apologized to the drivers who remained on the road during the Cabinet meeting, but he blamed the private road operators for not reacting to the storm.

Turkey’s snowstorm has drawn criticism, with members of Erdogan’s government and the opposition-led municipality blaming the chaos and praising their disaster management efforts.

Istanbul Mayor Akram Imamoglu, a well-known opposition politician who was presented as a possible opponent to Erdogan in the 2023 elections, apologized to thousands of people on Wednesday for the suffering they suffered on the roads of Istanbul. However, he rejected criticism for meeting with the British ambassador for lunch during the crisis.