Yahoo – AFP,
4 Nov 2014
Ankara (AFP) - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's grandiose new presidential palace is costing Turkey more than $600 million, nearly twice previous estimates, the country's finance minister said Tuesday.
The new Ak Saray presidential palace on the outskirts of Ankara on October 29, 2014 (AFP Photo/Adem Altan) |
Ankara (AFP) - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's grandiose new presidential palace is costing Turkey more than $600 million, nearly twice previous estimates, the country's finance minister said Tuesday.
The vast
new 1,000-room palace -- more than 30 times larger than the White House and
bigger even than France's sprawling Palace of Versailles -- has been condemned
by the opposition as an absurd extravagance that showed Erdogan was slipping
towards authoritarian rule.
Answering
questions from opposition MPs, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said that the palace
was costing around 1.37 billion Turkish lira (490 million euros, $615 million).
This
included over 300 million lira ($135 million) that has been allocated in the
budget for 2015, he added -- a steep rise on previously quoted price tag of
$350 million.
Simsek also
revealed that another new Erdogan acquisition -- a brand new Airbus A330-200
presidential jet -- has cost $185 million.
Erdogan
held the first official event at the new presidential palace on October 29 to
mark Turkey's annual republic day.
But in a
sign the building may not be entirely ready, all other official events are still
being held at the president's former Cankaya residence and it is not clear when
all functions will transfer to the new complex.
The palace,
built in forest land on the outskirts of Ankara, has been dubbed by the press
as the Ak Saray (White Palace) but is officially known as the Cumhurbaskanligi
Sarayi (Presidential Palace).
Some
Erdogan critics have compared the 200,000 square metres (2.1 million square
feet) edifice to the People's Palace built by Romania's communist dictator
Nicolae Ceausescu, but it is actually smaller than the building in Bucharest.
The post of
president has been a largely ceremonial in Turkey until Erdogan took office in
August after over a decade as prime minister.
He vowed to
wield real power, something he has clearly done in his first weeks in office,
clearly remaining Turkey's number one. Civil servants and advisors working for
the president are also likely to be housed in the palace.
Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is to move into the Cankaya Palace in downtown Ankara
which was once home to the modern republic's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
For the
opposition, the new palace marks another betrayal by Erdogan of Turkey's
secular heritage bequeathed by Ataturk, who based the republic on a strict
separation of religion and state.
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