Erdoğan spends vacation in controversial Urla villas

Prime Minister and President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his family have been on vacation recently in their controversial villas in the Urla district of İzmir province that were allegedly built in an environmentally protected zone, according to the Hürriyet daily.

The Urla villas came to public attention early this year following the exposure of a graft probe in which senior government members have been implicated. According to alleged phone conversations which surfaced in the media in January, a businessman close to Erdoğan, Mustafa Latif Topbaş, decided to build eight luxury villas near the village of Zeytineli in Urla but was denied a building permit, as the area was a first-degree environmentally protected zone. The businessman asked the prime minister to change the zone to a third-degree protected zone so that he could get the permits he needed. The prime minister allegedly helped the businessman and reportedly received two villas from him in return.

Details of phone conversations apparently between Topbaş and the prime minister's daughter also made their way into the media. In a conversation between Erdoğan's daughter Sümeyye and Topbaş, she tells the businessman that she and her mother had taken a look at the construction plans for the villas and liked two of them, but wanted to make some changes to the plans. Topbaş then told Sümeyye that he could visit the Erdoğan family at their residence later in the day to discuss their suggested changes, according to the alleged conversations.

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