I received this well written and detailed article yesterday and promised I would publish it.  I'm not sure I'm totally in agreement with a lot of it but it's how he feels and is entitled to.  Many of you at TLF may be aware of the authors identity and I would ask that you respect his anonimity.

                                    THE SINISTER PLAN

Never before in my life have l encountered such sinister and corrupt practices on a regular basis, in such a short period of time, than here in Turkey.  To have so many criminals and swindlers condensed in such a small area, purely to swindle foreigners, is something I find totally amazing.  The whole system seems to be geared up for one purpose and that is to swindle the foreigners out of their hard earned money for the sole intention to make the Turkish economy wealthy.  There seems to be nowhere a foreigner can go to, to seek justice in any form and these vile people flourish with impunity. It appears, on the face of it, that the highly criminalized system in Turkey has been deliberately allowed to flourish.  Whether this is because of an inherent hatred of Europeans ‘taking over’ the country, one can only imagine.  Of course, the legal system gets around this by classing every property scam as a civil matter and tells me that this is all quite deliberate.

The proof is there for everybody to see.  When you hear of buyers fighting for years, for what is rightfully theirs, something that has been paid for with hard earned money and utilising the legal system correctly, only to find out they do not own it, is quite often due to the builder having avoided paying the landowner and has used the tapu as collateral for other loans.  When the affected property owners finally get their day in court, all they get is to be told that they have won their case but they still have to pay off the debt from the builder, their agent and the lawyer. These scum know that Turkish law will be on their side and not on the buyers side, which is why this practice continues after nearly 10 years.  Many stories about buyers victories have been published in public forums, newspapers and even transmitted on TV.  However it is put across and whichever medium is used, the developer always wins, even if he loses, if that makes sense  and this clearly demonstrates the lack of justice in the system.  We believe this is one of the reasons that the mafia thrives in this country because one other country, Russia, springs to mind with similar problems.  The country thrives on mafia money and very often, officials in the Turkish Government are on the take from these people, you only have to check out the transparency table published every year, which shows Turkey very high on the corruption list. Bear in mind that Turkey is a country trying to win EU membership!  We all know what happened after the grand French/German expansion plan really got underway.  We now have basket-case countries like Albania, Serbia and Romania as full members running prostitution and gambling gangs all over London.

We believe these actions were deliberate and well thought out long before the rush of foreigner’s to buy here in Turkey ever took place.  Buying property these days in Turkey can rarely be called ‘investment’ but more like buying into a life of stress, financial worries and ill health.  Nearly ten years down the line and the horrors from the Turkish system have demonstrated this was all set up with a sinister plan right from the start to dupe the foreigners out of their money.  Their intentions were never to hand over the proper title deeds to the buyers at all but to totally abuse the buyers trust.  A domino effect has now taken place, with foreign owned properties being seized on a weekly basis from the money lenders and the landowners.  The banks are making a fortune, reclaiming property and selling it at knockdown prices at auction, while the builders and the estate agents are just getting away unpunished.

From what l have experienced and what I have found out from others, the system seems to be more in favour of the criminals then they are with the foreign victims.This is why so many foreign criminals come here to go in parnership with thieving Turkish businesses because the corrupt system will not install any of the proper non corrupt regulative bodies needed to keep the criminals away from the property industry, which in turn, sets up a crime syndicate to feed crime. I have yet to come across any form of justice that favours the foreign victim, all cases seem to be geared towards protecting the criminals.  I certainly don’t consider it inconceivable that the Turkish Justice System is not involved in this plan in some way.  Crime certainly does seem to pay in this country to feed a colossal amount of money to the local economy.  Whichever story you hear or read about, the victim comes off worse every time, irrespective of who was at fault.

It is rather like a spider, luring the prey into its sticky.  Once you’re in, you are sucked dry, with no way of escaping its clutches.  The previous friendliness now turns to total agression and abuse with threats, intmidation and even guns.  You are now just another statistic in Turkeys disgusting and obscene treatment of foreigners.  Before you have even come to terms with what has just happened, these vile scum are moving onto their next victim. They do not care if you have lost everything you have ever worked for, that you now have nowhere to go because you are nearly bankrupt.  The loss of your mental health and well being is of no concern to them because they are absent of compassion. 

These people know that they will escape punishment because the buyer has nothing left.  They have no money left and even if they could afford a to enlist a grossly expensive and useless Turkish lawyer, a huge and unnacceptable number of them only have theirs and their Turksih countrymens interests at heart.  This has happened time and time again and the pathetic statement from the Turkish Government that they will withdraw the lawyers licence to practice is just lip service.  I have yet to hear of a Turksih lawyer being struck off but I am happy to be corrected.

It’s my opinion that the police and lawyers are just as corrupt as the property industry that they are supposed to police. The so called regulative bodies set up to combat such vile corruption is just a smoke screen.  l have even heard from reliable sources that handouts are given to the authorities by the property industry, so that the builder gets the go ahead to build on land where is has been rohibited.  They not only know exactly what they are doing but later, when the crap hits the fan, they can use the line, “Well, didn’t you do your research?”

Turkeys system over the years has seen an acceleration of unethical behaviour that has inspired a culture of fraud.This has allowed criminal activity to grow and flourish to the point where the criminals have control of the local economy. Many businesses in the Turkish tourist areas have been taking advantage of the foreigners by looking at then as walking money banks to be exploited freely.  Even the lawyers take advantage of foreigners that have undergone massive mental and financial suffering by taking what little savings the victims have left to pursue a legal course that nine times out of ten know they have no chance of winning.

Some of the obstacles that have been set up are nothing short of ludicrous.  The prevention of buying in a military zone is a classic that is worth a good laugh.  Is anybody aware of a military zone in Side, for instance?  No, of course not but the dossiers of countless forms will go off to some idiotic bureaucrat in Ankara.  Hasn’t anybody in the Turkish Governement worked out yet that Side is not in a military zone?  By doing the blindingly obvious and stating that Side is not a military zone, they could cut down on the pathetic level of bureaucracy, reduce the stress for property buying foreigners and save a couple of rainforests.

The British Government could have a huge role here but they have proved to be more and more innefectual and politically correct over the last two decades.  It’s not surprising that the British authorities let the Turkisget away with this disgusing treatment of its guests.  Maybe the British should start making the Turksih living in the UK squirm a bit.  Do not allow them work permits, do military checks on them, charge them the equivalent for their residence visa, force them to have a car number plate that singles them out as a target for every opportunist thief going, charge them every £40 every time they need the services of a translator for an average of 6 minutes work and withold their property deeds for up to two years after they have handed over 100% of their money.

The deeds or ‘tapus’ are frequently used as collateral to take out more loans on the property on the basis that the loan has to be paid back by an agreed date but the plan is not to pay the loan back because the moneylenders can then seize the property back and sell it off at auction considerably cheaper than for what they were purchased. The bank gets their money back and the builder keeps the buyers money by claiming to be in debt or bankrupt. The builders, the estate agents and the lawyer are all winners in this scam and the only loser is the foreign buyers.

I always tell people I meet, who may be considering buying property here, never to buy a new build or off-plan and also never ever buy on complexes in Turkey, since these are where the problems are mainly happening.  Even buying a resale can have its drawbacks, due to the fact that the new owner has just realized that he has bought a property in a prohibited area, or the property borders are not in line with the councils building plans and it can even be bought inheriting a massive debt.  Finding a non corrupt lawyer is like finding a needle in a haystack , to help you through the confused mist of legal Turkish jargon. The only way to avoid such nightmares is to never buy at all in Turkey.  Just go for the renting, it is a much safer bet and a lot less hassle and you are not tied down with a property that you will find hard to sell on later at a loss.  And mark my words, I do mean a big loss.  If you meet anybody who has made a decent property on a sale, I would be amazed.

Don’t ever believe any estate agent who tells you that buying property in Turkey is an investment, because it isn’t.  That is a downright lie, although you may sell it at a small profit in 20 years.  lt has been way overpriced for far too long to begin with and the building costs do not reflect the true value, since they can still barely build an adequate property that doesn’t leak when it rains or is not riddled with damp because they have not worked out that installing a layer of bitumen or a sheet of polythene at a cost of around £20 on the hardstanding stops all the damp problems.  It’s virtually guaranteed that after about 10 years, structural problems because of sub standard workmanship will rear their ugly heads and will cost you thousands to put right.  By and large, property prices have decreased and are still decreasing with some developers marking down property by as much as 50% to try and offload it and clear their debts to the banks.

The property market in Turkey is swamped with 10’s of thousands of empty dwellings, exposed to the adverse weather conditions and steadily deteriorating, while the builder is still building more of the same sub-standard property to blight the landscape.  The 10 year warranty that they give you is not worth the paper it is written on and we know of at least one lady who won a case 4 years ago against a developer for the structural problems she now has but the developer has not paid her a penny and is still walking free.  Such is the justice here!

Fortunately, we were able to sell our house and not at a loss but neither did we make a profit.  We are now safely back in the UK where we have  legal protection to cover every eventuality known to mankind.  Such are the advantages of living in a civilised democracy.

Although rather long-winded, I hope that this article will serve as a warning to anybody considering buying in Turkey.  Dozens of hard pressed Brits are leaving every year and that figure would probably quadruple if they were able to offload their property without making a massive loss.  The only way to avoid such financial and mental health problems is quite simply, never, ever buy in Turkey until they can prove 100% to the many global communities that they have the proper non corrupt regulative boards in place, which is highly unlikely under the current Islamic political regime of Rejep Erdogan.  There are now many countries within the EU that are considerably cheaper to live in than Turkey, where there is not a culture of deceit, lies and exploitation of foreigners.