Erdogan’s New Palace is the Biggest in the World

• 01.16.2015, 16:54
•  Region,  World,  Diaspora,  No-politics

Turkish society actively discusses Turkish president's biggest presidential palace in the world. Opposition media strongly condemns President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s quite expensive “project”. Erdogan is being accused of behaving like a “sultan”. The new presidential palace costs 615 million dollars. Turkish media reports that $ 4 million was spent only for the construction of the entrance staircases of the new residence. Erdogan's residence occupies as much space as it is needed for building137 secondary schools. Erdogan moved into this palace on August 30 after becoming a president. This is the biggest residential palace in the world. In the second place is the palace of the Sultan of Brunei. Turkish president's palace is bigger than the White House in Washington, the Kremlin in Moscow and even the Palace of Versailles near Paris.

Erdogan decided to leave the historical residential palace in the metropolitan district of Cankaya, where all 11 presidents of Turkey resided starting from the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Now Turkey’s Prime Minister resides in this palace.  Mustafa Kemal Ataturk spent the last days of his life in the palace as his health deteriorated.  He died at 9:05 a.m. on November 10, 1938. All the clocks in the palace were stopped and set to 9:05 after his death. Although this has changed recently and the clocks in the palace are now set according to the local time in Turkey, the clock in the room, where he died is still pointing to 9:05 a.m.

For the construction of the palace hundreds of trees were cut in one of the best preserved green areas of Ankara, which was founded by Ataturk. Today’s Zaman notes that the new residential palace symbolizes the illegality "of the new Turkey."

It should be mentioned that the presidential palace in Cankaya belonged to the Armenian family Qasabyan. They were forcibly evicted from Ankara.

An economist at Global Source Partners told Bloomberg: “Erdogan’s critics believe the mega mansion is a sign that he feels superior to the law that governs the country”.