Turkey's advance towards Syria aims to revive the construction sector through a project to house 2 million refugees. A gift to the country's key companies.
The offensive launched in Syria by Turkey, on 9 October, and still under way, does not aim solely to claim the areas on the border between the two states, under the control of popular forces made up of the People's Protection Units (Ypg), the Women's Protection Units (Ypj) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (Sdf), but also to revive the Turkish economy through a large-scale real-estate project capable of allowing the settlement of around two million Syrian refugees who fled the civil war in their country and are currently in Turkey.
The housing project in "safe zones" — the so-called buffer zone inside Syrian territory, 482 kilometres long and 28 kilometres deep — therefore has a dual objective. On the one hand, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can address the growing public anger over the presence of millions of Syrians in Turkey; on the other, he can support the construction sector, which includes close allies who have helped keep him in power.
The construction project in the "safe zone" involves the building of 140 villages with an average population of five thousand people each, plus ten towns of 30,000 inhabitants, with six thousand homes ranging from 250 to 350 square metres plus a garden, according to Reuters. Completing this pharaonic picture are hospitals, football pitches, eleven mosques, nine schools and numerous other facilities.
To carry out this (luxury) project, President Erdogan has stated his intention to enlist the Public Housing Development Administration (Toki), Turkey's public housing agency, known for its involvement in some of the country's most controversial development plans.
Toki has, in fact, been building homes for earthquake victims, social housing at regulated prices, sports stadiums, temporary accommodation for refugees, places of worship, hospitals and schools since 1992. In 2013, sixteen Toki officials were arrested as part of the largest corruption and money-laundering investigation — an investigation divided into several phases that also implicated a number of ministers (Erdogan was prime minister at the time), many members of the ruling Akp party, bankers, Erdogan's own sons and even some affiliates of the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda. In response, the government led by Erdogan ordered a "purge" of the Turkish police officers involved in the investigations, dismissing or reassigning thousands of police officers and hundreds of judges and prosecutors — including those leading the investigation — and passed a law increasing government control over the judiciary.
Toki has been taken to court on numerous occasions in connection with scandals, missed delivery deadlines and poor construction quality. Among the most glaring cases is that of Nusaybin, a town destroyed between 2016 and 2018 during clashes between the state's armed forces and local armed organisations.
The reconstruction project — like the current one, also subject to electoral propaganda — provided for the construction of 9,500 apartments for the rehousing of the inhabitants of Nusaybin. However, in May 2019, some inspectors from the Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation identified a series of irregularities in the materials used in the construction of the buildings. As a result, the apartments that were partly built have not yet been handed over to any resident.
It will not be Toki alone that benefits from such a project, but the entire construction sector, which contracted by 13 per cent in the last quarter: construction investment fell by 29 per cent and home sales continued to decline, leaving an unsold housing stock of almost 1 million. The August 2019 report issued by the Association of Construction Material Producers (Imsad) revealed a 60 per cent reduction in building permits in the first half of this year. The sharp drop in new construction led to a 20 per cent reduction in construction material production.
"The housing project envisaged by the Turkish authorities is a potential windfall for Turkish construction companies close to the Akp [the party currently in power, ed.]," said Wolfango Piccoli, chief executive of Teneo, a global consultancy firm also active in Turkey. Following the announcement of the project, shares in cement producer Mardin Cimento rose in two days by more than they had in nearly 20 years. The company is the closest to Syria and is seen as a potential beneficiary of the pharaonic construction project.
One question naturally arises: with whose money will the Ankara government deliver the project? We are talking about a project estimated at 150 billion Turkish lira (over 20 billion euros). With the ongoing property crisis in Turkey, it seems impossible that Erdogan's government could finance such a project on its own. Finding the money for Turkish housing construction in the safe zone therefore requires a whole series of negotiations with potential partners. The president said he would seek financial assistance from the United States, Europe and the World Bank, before turning to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia, in particular, could play a significant role.
At the last meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, on 9 December, in Istanbul, Erdogan stated: "We have begun the preliminary work for the implementation of the project to relocate the Syrian refugees present in Turkey. At the Nato summit and at the United Nations General Assembly I handed all leaders the details of our project. Unfortunately, we have not received any indication of support so far. It is clear that no one would have the courage to bear alone the economic burden created by around nine million refugees in the region [including those in Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Iraq, ed.]. Therefore, sooner or later everyone will have to support our project of building new homes."
In Turkey, discontent towards Syrian refugees is growing, discontent that spills over daily into violent, racist acts, including several attempted lynchings against them. On 29 June 2019, a night raid destroyed a number of shops in the city of Istanbul belonging to Syrian refugees. Episodes of violence are also being recorded in cities along the border with Syria: in January, in the city of Antep, a number of Syrian citizens were targeted by a collective lynching campaign launched online. According to their attackers, the victims had taken part in a violent incident that had occurred in the city a few days earlier. The accusation proved to be unfounded, and unfortunately three Syrian citizens were stabbed and seriously injured. According to research carried out by the Hrant Dink Foundation in November 2019, Syrian refugees top the list of groups targeted by hate speech on social media.