Ukraine in Arabic | Turkish president to build the world's most expensive palace
KYIV/Ukraine in Arabic/ President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s presidential palace, over 30 times the size of the White House and four times the size of Versailles, is costing Turkey $615 million, the country’s finance minister Mehmet Simsek said Tuesday.
Since becoming Turkey’s president in August, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned this once-ceremonial post into a new seat of power that is transforming how Turkey is ruled -- and he’s making sure the seat in question has all the trappings too.
The largesse has drawn the ire of opponents who accuse Erdogan of tramping on the country’s political system, according to Atilla Yesilada, an economist at GlobalSource Partners, a New York-based consultancy.
The palace, which was constructed against court orders in a national park, shows Erdogan’s “increasing sense of being above the country he governs and the rule of law,” Yesilada said by phone. “Whoever criticizes Erdogan and the ruling elite’s behavior is labeled a betrayer of the nation.”
Erdogan’s office did not comment when contacted by e-mail. Erdogan told a meeting of the ruling AK Party on March 5 that “no one can prevent the completion of this building. If they are powerful enough, let them come and demolish it.”
Lavish Spending
As prime minister for 11 years, Erdogan presided over annual economic growth that averaged about 5 percent, better than most of his predecessors. That assures him of continued popular support, according to Anthony Skinner, head of analysis for the Middle East and North Africa at U.K.-based forecasting company Maplecroft.
Erdogan can count on that support, and his mandate as the country’s first directly elected president, while he “spends taxpayers’ money on lavish” furnishings for his office, said Skinner.
The new presidential pad, the AK Saray, or White Palace -- a play on the name of Turkey’s ruling AK Party -- was also designed, in part, by Erdogan. It has 1,000 rooms, green granite inlays, and washrooms with silk wallpaper, said Tezcan Karakus Candan, head of Ankara’s Chamber of Architects, which tried to stop the building work with 33 court cases starting in 2007. Mature plane trees in the grounds, which probably cost about $3,750 apiece to import, subsequently died, she said.
New Turkey
The palace’s floor area of 289,000 square meters (3.1 million square feet) exceeds that of the world’s current largest residential palace, the Istana Nurul Iman palace of the Sultan of Brunei, which was completed in 1984 at a cost of $442 million, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
Erdogan has repeatedly said he would like to replace Turkey’s parliamentary system with a more presidential one. So far, his supporters have lacked the two-thirds parliamentary majority necessary to alter the constitution. Even so, Erdogan says he’ll be an “active” president by chairing weekly cabinet meetings, which former heads of states rarely did.
Erdogan has vowed to work closely with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who will use the former presidential residence for receptions. “The new Turkey should express itself with something new,” Erdogan said, referring to the plane and the other trappings of his office.
