Housing in Turkey: Policy, Planning, Practice

This book presents the major features of the path that Turkish housing system has followed since 2000. Its primary focus is to build an understanding of housing in Turkey from the policy, planning, and implementation perspectives in the 21st century, interwoven with the effects of neoliberalism.

It investigates the social, spatial, and economic outcomes of the shift in philosophy and behaviour by the government regarding housing. The book discusses failures in housing outcomes as government failures, incorrect or inefficient regulations, lack of regulations, and lack of monitoring of the policy outcomes. Chapters on the housing-economy relationship, financialization and indebtedness, housing market experiences based on case studies, and the housing policy provide the reader with an opportunity to observe different outcomes in a world where housing challenges and issues are similar.

This book will be of interest to urban planners, political scientists, and sociologists, as well as undergraduate/graduate students and housing sector experts all over the world who are interested in the various dimensions of the housing problem.

Esma AKSOY KHURAMİ is currently Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, the Department of City and Regional Planning at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University. She earned her bachelor’s (2014), MSc (2017), and PhD (2021) degrees from Middle East Technical University. She received several awards with her MSc thesis, including the Nathaniel Lichfield Award by Regional Studies Association in 2017. Her research interests focus on low-income households, housing affordability, homeownership, quantitative methods, and techniques in housing and planning studies.

Ö. Burcu ÖZDEMIR SARI is Associate Professor at the Department of City and Regional Planning, Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey. She earned her PhD in Spatial Planning at TU Dortmund, Germany. She conducted research projects about housing affordability, residential vacancy, and property rights. She is currently teaching urban economics and housing. Her research interests are urban studies, housing economics, housing policy, and residential reinvestment. She is the editor of the Housing Book Series launched by the Institute of Urban Studies (Turkey).

Nil UZUN is a Professor at the Department of City and Regional Planning, Middle East Technical University (METU), Turkey. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Urban Geography at Utrecht University in 2001 with her dissertation on gentrification in İstanbul. She participated in and conducted research projects about urban transformation. Along with teaching urbanization and urban sociology, she is doing research mainly on gentrification and residential transformation.