Turkey's mass housing agency builds over half a million homes in ten years

Serkan Alan/ DUVAR

The main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) Gülizer Biçer Karaca submitted an inquiry to Turkey's mass housing agency, the Housing Administration of Turkey (TOKİ) regarding how many homes it has built in the last decade. 

TOKİ responded by saying that it has built 538,390 homes in the past ten years, while the construction of an additional 82,000 homes is ongoing. The institution to date has built a total of 847,954 homes, and the cities with the highest number of TOKİ-built homes are Istanbul, Ankara, Van, Gaziantep, and Kocaeli. 

The CHP's Karaca blasted TOKİ for functioning more like a company than a state housing institution: “Rather than insuring the state's housing rights and everyone's right to live in a healthy environment, and rather than adopting policies that are in the benefit of the public, by acting like a company rather than in accordance with public principles and acting with the mentality of a contractor, the situation that they have brought the country in is out in the open,” she said. 

Karaca was also critical of a national park project that TOKİ is currently engaged in, likening in to a mere construction project:

“In the name of environmental planning and a national park, they are continuing with construction. What the [ruling Justice and Development Party] AKP government understands about nature and the environment is construction and profit,” Karaca said, also accusing TOKİ of contributing to the concretization of the country.