ANKARA: In government for 15 years and controlling the Istanbul and Ankara municipalities for 24, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has decided to roll out a construction campaign worth $15 billion annually and $400 billion in total.
Turning Turkey into a construction zone, especially Istanbul, will be an important lifeline for the AKP as it enters its 16th year of government. Facing three important elections in 2019, it appears the AKP administration has suddenly remembered the risk of a long-overdue earthquake and plans an extensive programme of urban renewal by flushing money into the system to revive the economy, especially the construction industry. It should not surprise anyone that the overwhelming share of financial resources is likely to be poured into companies with close ties to the government.
Starting this year, 500,000 buildings will be demolished annually and in total 7.5 million will be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. This will be an important campaign strategy in the run-up to the March 2019 municipality elections, plus parliamentary and presidential polls due before November next year. The government hopes the plan will revive the economy and increase employment.
In addition, an important part of the strategy is to build new permanent housing for Syrian refugees by the Housing Department Administration (TOKI), especially in those cities where there are high number of Syrians, or just over the border in Syria.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and members of the government, who have over the past few years praised the hospitality of Turkish people, have recently begun talking of placing Syrian refugees in areas of Syria cleared of Islamic State and the Syrian Kurdish YPG.
Former Environment and Urban Planning Minister Erdoğan Bayraktar previously announced that $400 billion would be made available as part of preparations for the next big quake. He said this would be used to demolish buildings and rebuild them according to new building codes.
Such preparations have gained considerable pace in the run-up to next year’s elections. Top of the agenda is making funds available to local municipalities and making sure they spend it on the construction projects. The most important task of new Istanbul, Ankara and Bursa mayors appointed by the president after he had forced the old mayors to resign, is to steer the policy in this direction in order to win the elections.
In his recent warnings to local municipalities and his own party officials, President Erdoğan repeatedly called for a move away from vertical construction to a more lateral type, avoiding building taller than six floors.
