“It’s not just the homebuilders who go bankrupt. Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty ImagesĪtilla Yesilada, Turkey analyst for GlobalSource Partners, an emerging markets analysis firm, said Burj al Babas’s fate was a snapshot of the wider malaise plaguing the Turkish construction sector. The collapsing construction bubble has resulted in half-finished high-rises and ghost towns all over the country.Ī row of empty homes in the development. However, the weakening Turkish lira has left many companies struggling to pay off the foreign currency debt borrowed to finance projects, stalling work and bankrupting companies. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has encouraged a construction boom during his time in office, hailing large, job-heavy infrastructure projects as the engine of the Turkish economy. “Developments without proper planning that do not contextualise the geography and history of their surroundings have exploded in Turkey since.” “I worry that projects like Burj al Babas opened Pandora’s box, in some respects,” he said. In several places, housing developments must now be low-rise and fit in with existing neighbourhoods.īut it may be too late to undo some of the damage, said Yaşar Adnan Adanalı, an Istanbul-based urban development researcher. Since Burj al Babas got the go-ahead, the Turkish government has introduced new building regulations designed to preserve local character and heritage. The construction project has long been hated by Mudurnu locals, who say it is not in keeping with the area’s traditional architecture, characterised by Byzantine buildings, traditional Ottoman wooden houses and a 600-year-old mosque. Empty homes in the Burj al Babas development.

Abandoned castle town