Thousands of families hit by wrong urban transformation policies across Turkey

Many Turkish people, who live in unstable buildings at high risk of collapsing during an earthquake have said "yes" to urban transformation projects with the hope of renewing their houses but thousands of them have been disappointed due to several wrong policies, which has paved the way for the appearance of hundreds of contractors who have not kept their promise to build.

"When an earthquake hits somewhere, the same thought bothers us—'What will happen when an earthquake happens in Istanbul?'—With this fear in mind, we signed a deal with a contractor to renew our house under the urban transformation project. However, we have been waiting for years and nobody is building our house," said Firdevs Uluocak, a woman from the Fikirtepe district of Istanbul, where an intensive urban transformation project has been underway for the last six years. 

Some of the contractors have finalized the buildings in the neighborhood and have handed them over to their owners in the last six years, but some of them have not even started construction—a move which has harmed thousands of people. 

Construction companies failed to keep their promises to build 35,000 properties in the neighborhood due to several reasons. Some of them went bankrupt or faced problems of finding capital or some others witnessed legal problems. In the end, many homeowners have to live out of their own properties.

In a bid to complete such projects, the ministry of environment and urban affairs has stepped in and announced these projects will be completed through a financial plan, which is backed by a number of state agencies. Problems, however, seem to remain as we have seen during our visit to Fikirtepe.

"We made a contract with a company three years ago. In line with...