Twelve and a half years to own a house in Turkey
An Istanbulite must work and save up for 12.5 years without spending anything in order to be able to own a 100-square-meter house.
The Turkish Data Processing Center (TUVIMER) has come to this conclusion by evaluating numbers provided by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK). The study was based on the per capita income of the residents of Turkey’s five largest cities - Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Antalya and Bursa - and average house prices.
If you can save money in Istanbul without eating, drinking, paying rent, sending kids to school, and traveling, we cannot know how, of course, you can purchase eight square meters of housing in a year. For your information, you can buy 10 square meters in İzmir and 20 square meters in Ankara.
If they have not inherited something from their family or did not hit the jackpot, it is evidently difficult for the minimum wage earners, “uncorrupt civil servants” and workers to live from hand to mouth, let alone purchase a house.
It is surely possible for fortune to smile upon people and people to take the opportunity, or you to prosper through your own efforts or intelligence. Nevertheless, let me do a favor and whisper how to acquire houses, or even mansions.
The first task is to register with a party, or even if one does not register, “come close enough to connect to the benefit chain.” Naturally, one should not register with a random party. It is a must to at least register with the party which controls the municipal corporation of the person’s residential district or city.
If you idealistically defend the party, you will become the one who works like a dog without even getting a pat on the back, rather than getting a house. Not everyone who is involved in politics prospers, of course. Therefore, one needs to be vigilant, carefully watch how the ascendants ascend and seek to climb up the pyramid right away. You do not have to be a big fish either. After all, all you want is a 100-square-meter house.
Watch the pilot fishes
Instead of the big fishes, watch the pilot fishes which never leave the big ones’ tails and feed on their wastes. They always grow fat.
I might have as well written this article about politics today, but its main message encompasses other sectors as well. (Politics is a profession that can be done with honor, without getting your hands dirty. I salute those who live by their ideals.) You can mooch a 100-square-meter house by establishing a benefit chain, using fraud or trickery, being unjust, or even staying silent while watching injustice happen.
I am not stupid enough to suggest that all home owners acquired their houses through the road of injustice, but listen to me if you want to close this deal in a few years rather than live for 12.5 years without eating or drinking anything. Learn to butter people up and get the kitchen; be insidious and guarantee the bathroom; develop a conscience immune to lies and deception, and settle down in the living room…
What did Proudhon say?
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first self-declared anarchist and one of anarchism’s most influential theorists, wrote, “Property is theft,” in his book “What Is Property,” first published in 1840. I have never identified myself with anarchism, but I thought, “This guy is right,” when I first read him. However, rather than listening to Proudhon and earning an honest penny by working for 12.5 years without eating, drinking or spending anything, listen to me and find a shortcut.
Have the Midas touch…