Transportation, Maritime Affairs and Communications Minister Binali Yıldırım said in Parliament on Tuesday that construction of Istanbul’s third bridge is close to completion and that the bridge will be operational in May 2016.

Answering the questions in Parliament concerning the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, the third bridge over the Bosporus, the minister informed the deputies present that 88 percent of the construction has been completed and that almost all the steel bridge floor sections are in place.

The third Bosporus bridge will connect the neighborhood of Garipçe in the Sarıyer district on the European side of Istanbul with Beykoz’s Poyrazköy neighborhood on the Asian side. When completed, the bridge will be the longest combined motorway/railway bridge in the world and the world’s eighth-longest suspension bridge.

At the groundbreaking ceremony for the bridge in June 2013, then-President Abdullah Gül announced that the third Bosporus bridge would be named after Ottoman Sultan Yavuz Selim, commonly known in English as Selim the Grim. He enlarged the Ottoman Empire into the Middle East and North Africa in 1514–1517 and gained the title Caliph of Islam for the Ottoman dynasty after his conquest of Egypt in 1517.