It's sort of true. There's a lot of construction going on in and around Istanbul, and most of the time it's either illegal or approved ex post facto for the ben

It's sort of true. There's a lot of construction going on in and around Istanbul, and most of the time it's either illegal or approved ex post facto for the benefit of the people close to government. Canal istanbul had a similar issue with proposed-land (before it was known) being acquired in advance by people close to Erdogan abroad, before it's acquired back under emminent domain at a premium. All this gets prevented by the new municipal government in Istanbul and Ankara. Erdogan also is on a tight leash these days, and publicly threatened to cut federal funding for both Istanbul and Ankara - it is kind of unheard of because when local government was under AKP ruling they had practically unlimited funding. So now that his party lost the local elections in two major cities, he's trying to make them look incompetent by cutting their funding, in hopes for winning the next election. Either Mansur Yavas or Ekrem Imamoglu will eventually be a candidate for President in following years, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.