Property rights in urban regeneration projects in Turkey

The world’s urban population has increased rapidly since the 1950s mainly because of rural-to-urban migration. This rapid increase has led to the construction of illegal settlements, in particular, in the megacities of developing countries. Being one of those countries, Turkey has more than two million squats and a large number of unlicensed buildings. Considering that a large part of the country lies on an earthquake zone, this low-quality building stock is a big threat to their inhabitants. Moreover, this issue can only be eliminated with the renewal of the unsafe buildings. At this point, urban regeneration (UR) projects that are in progress in the country are a powerful tool for providing safe and healthy building stock and environments. In this paper, we describe the Turkish method of UR and the property rights given to stakeholders, discuss the issues experienced in the projects, and provide some solutions for the aforementioned issues.