Shaky beams

Acarkent, an upscale housing division in the suburbs on the Asian side of Istanbul, has been racked with scandal the past week as investigations have shown that the lion’s share of the homes on the gated estate were constructed illegally and to the detriment of the local environment.

The first dwellings on the compound, nestled on top of verdant hills and running streams overlooking the Bosphorus, were built some 10 years ago. According to Osman Pepe, Environment and Forest Minister, approval was given to build on 6% of the 2200-dönüm (1 dönüm equals 1000 sq meters) tract of land. All buildings on the tract of property were issued title deeds, as they were constructed within the bounds of Turkish construction and real estate law.

Upon further scrutiny by the Ministry, however, a confidential investigation revealed that the rules had been violated, and that building was taken place over 92% of the 2200-dönüm estate, pushing for 96% coverage, and that illegal construction on the company’s Acar Istanbul project was launched on May 5, 2005. Further building on the project has since been put to a halt by the Ministry. “As a Ministry, we know what our responsibilities are. We will do what we have to do. I want to let it be known that we will not renege on our word, whatever the price may be,” Pepe was quoted as saying in the Turkish daily newspaper Hurriyet. The fact that former Environment and Forest Minister Hasan Ekinci owns 13 villas in the compound has cast a further air of suspicion over the scandal.

When doing an official survey of the compound, four Ministry officials were denied access by armed guards. Pepe commented, “The gates were so high, they were like a castle. To say really what happened at that moment was that my blood jumped to my brain. The officials said, ‘we couldn’t go in because we were scared. They had guns.'” Many homes in the elite Acarkent compound fetch upwards of 1 million dollars, and are flanked with private swimming pools and tennis courts. Living in one of these compounds, or “siteler”, is considered by some moneyed Istanbul residents to be the pinnacle of status symbols. If Pepe’s measures to cancel the title deeds of the homes built anywhere past the originally approved 6% go through, they will have the same legal status as the nearby gecekondu, or shanty dwellings, often constructed overnight by recent immigrants from Turkey’s impoverished eastern provinces. Due to a loophole in Turkish law, these gecekondu cannot be easily torn down.