Author(s)

H. Yakar

Abstract

The acquisition of real estate by foreign private and legal entities in Turkey has continued with an increasing momentum in recent years, especially in the settlements bordering the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea and in the important historical and tourist settlements. However, this became a significant problem in a different dimension due to the legal regulations made by the central and local governments from 2000s to make the sales easier. This study discusses this issue in two sub-regions; one of them is the \“Rocky Cappadocian Region” which was inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1985 and the other one is the \“Silifke Settlement” in Mersin which is also one of the country’s most important port cities. The emergent urbanization, environmental and planning problems in consequence of the acquisition of real estate by foreigners and both the common and the varied problems due to the geographical locations, features, and identities caused by sales have been accentuated in both the two sub-regions. As a result, this study associates the evidences obtained from the analysis which had been made between 2001and 2005 in the \“Rocky Cappadocian Region” and between 2006 and 2009 in the \“Silifke Settlement” such as the rate of real estate sales to foreigners, distributions of these rates according to years and countries within the region with urbanization, environment and planning problems, and in this context emphasizes the negative effects of the evidence to tourism. Evaluating these results compared with the formations of the Member States of the European Union, this study focuses on the solutions in the context of planning and sustainable urbanization – tourism. Keywords: sustainable urbanization – tourism, environmental problems (flood, earthquake, landslide).

Keywords

sustainable urbanization – tourism, environmental problems (flood, earthquake, landslide)