In the two big earthquakes in Van centre and Ercis district, 644 people lost their lives and more than 4 thousand people were injured. Thousands of houses were demolished in these two major earthquakes and tens of thousands of houses were heavily damaged.
After the earthquake in Van in 2011, 35 thousand TL were spent to build houses for the victims. But these houses were sold for 85 thousand TL.
After the delivery of the houses, thousands of people were forced to pay their debts to TOKI housing. TOKİ (Toplu Konut İdaresi Başkanlığı - Public Housing Development Administration) confiscated a huge number of houses from the earthquake victims and put them on sale until April 30th.
In the two big earthquakes in Van centre and Ercis district, 644 people lost their lives and more than 4 thousand people were injured. Thousands of houses were demolished in these two major earthquakes and tens of thousands of houses were heavily damaged.
After the earthquake, victims stayed in tents for months under snow during the cold winter. Aid came to Van from many parts of the world, victims mainly helped by Kurdish people. This aid though was not distributed by the AKP.
In fact, houses that were built with the aid collected and costing 35 thousand TL were subsequently sold to earthquake victims for 85 thousand TL by the AKP.
Some of the houses built by TOKİ were given to the citizens who had their homes destroyed while the rest was given to tenants. Thousands of people who have been living in the houses built by TOKI for about 7 years are now faced with having to pay huge some of money to the state, because they were unable to keep up payments the state itself had set.
Some of the tenants who had gone to live in TOKI houses have seen their houses taken from them as they could not pay they debts to the state.
Earthquake dwellings seized by the state are being resold. It has emerged that TOKİ is selling many houses and buildings built after the 2011 earthquake.
TOKI was founded in 1984 and appears to have become the major urban design/intervention tool of neo-liberal, profit-oriented policies of the AKP government. This meant dramatic changes to the historical and heritage of the cities in Turkey and Kurdistan. TOKI is building houses that will host people of Hasankeyf, basically evicted by the government to allow its project to build a new dam, despite this meaning the disappearance of the thousand years old city.
Soon after the AKP came to power, TOKI became the authorized organization in the field of housing and land production in AKP’s cities.
The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality alone (Erdogan has been mayor of Istanbul) has allocated public lands and plots to various urban projects, mainly through their sale to urban transformation projects, damaging the autonomous morphological structure of the city, destructing the unique textures and memories by making more than 3,900 plan modifications in four years.
It is important to note that governmental mass housing projects in their majority did not targeted the low-income groups, rather they supplied housing for the middle and high-income groups.
Walls to isolate Kurdistan
As part of the AKP “security” policy, Turkey is being literally surrounded by walls. TOKI has been commissioned those walls.
The first wall (Turkey-Iran) has been completed by more than half (of a 144 km, 90 miles in total) and will be finished by next spring.
Ankara is “securing” its frontiers from smuggling, illegal immigration and militant infiltration. So the official version goes.
President Erdogan had said in 2017 that Turkey would build walls along its border with Iraq and part of the border with Iran similar to the nearly completed one on its longest border, with Syria. The wall along the 911 km border with Syria had almost been finished, with only 25-30 km left.
