Construction is the key factor in Turkey’s booming economy: currently the government has more than half a trillion dollars’ worth of planned, ongoing or recently completed building projects across the country. Oppulent projects that strive back to the glory and splendour of the Ottoman Empire. Erdoğan’s immense “White Palace” with more than 1000 rooms, İstanbul’s third airport that aims at becoming world’s largest, the digging of a whole “new Bosporus” making an island out of İstanbul and the construction of the biggest mosque in the history of the republic. All of these projects are highly contested regarding environmental and social impacts. Continue reading Nothing New in “New Turkey’s” architecture →