Turkey: Unregistered owners spend 7 billion buying land

ANKARA

Squatters on unregistered plots of land have paid 7 billion Turkish lira ($2.9 billion) to the Turkish Treasury to register their ownership in the past year, the Turkish Finance Ministry said on Tuesday.

The plots of land, officially referred to as "2B," were formerly classified as forest where construction and agricultural activity were banned.

Migrants mostly settled as squatters on this land, without ever registering ownership or payment to the state of rent. They used the land as farms, grazing meadows, graveyards and housing.

After the new law approved by the parliament in 2012, this land became eligible for construction. Under the new law, the 872,336 residents only need to pay 70 percent of the land's current value.

"We have finalized the sale of 2B land to 514,383 of the 721,541 people who applied to purchase these properties as of Jan. 30 of this year," Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said.

There are some 4.1 million acres of 2B land across the country; Almost ninety percent of the land is located in Turkey's coastal provinces, Antalya, Istanbul, Mersin, Mugla and Sakarya. The country’s holiday resort Antalya has completed the largest sale according to Simsek.

"This ongoing issue has been resolved with the practice of sales, and the Turkish citizen has gained from the sales,” Simsek said.

ANKARA

The plots of land, officially referred to as "2B," were formerly classified as forest where construction and agricultural activity were banned.

Migrants mostly settled as squatters on this land, without ever registering ownership or payment to the state of rent. They used the land as farms, grazing meadows, graveyards and housing.

After the new law approved by the parliament in 2012, this land became eligible for construction. Under the new law, the 872,336 residents only need to pay 70 percent of the land's current value.

"We have finalized the sale of 2B land to 514,383 of the 721,541 people who applied to purchase these properties as of Jan. 30 of this year," Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said.

"This ongoing issue has been resolved with the practice of sales, and the Turkish citizen has gained from the sales,” Simsek said.