Building amnesty laws within the context of Turkey's urbanization process; Implementation of the legal regulation on building development peace in Ankara province

BUILDING AMNESTY LAWS WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF TURKEY'S URBANIZATION PROCESS; IMPLEMENTATION OF THE LEGAL REGULATION ON BUILDING DEVELOPMENT PEACE IN ANKARA PROVINCE TATLI, Aygül Master Thesis, Urban Design and Transformation 1.Advisor: Prof. Dr. Ali TÜREL 2.Advisor: Doç. Dr. Zerrin Ezgi KAHRAMAN May 2020, 157 pages Planning determines the ways and methods to be used to reach future goals. There are five basic principles that constitute the basic procedure and principles of planning, which are 'protecting integrity in the planning process', 'ensuring gradual unity between plans', 'taking the public interest and equality principle as a basis', 'ensuring the balance of compliance with legislation' and 'professional ethics and protection use'. Today's decisions also shape our future. Therefore, planning shapes the past, the present and the future. It requires taking some decisions in the direction of ensuring a common future for the society. Provision of a fair and equal social approach is one of the market regulation functions of planning. In this way, social disputes and disorder can be prevented. It can be seen from our country's history that, from the second half of the 19th century onwards, planning with its regulatory function has been directing the real estate market in order to improve spatial living conditions of the society and to establish certain standards. Building amnesty laws, which constitute a dilemma in the market and destroy the regulatory function of planning, firstly entered into force in Ankara in 1948, and were subsequently applied across the country. Today the latest building amnesty act is known as "construction peace". In this thesis, building amnesty laws and recently enacted building development peace regulations that have been affecting Turkey's urbanization process as well as regulatory functions of planning in the market are evaluated. Building amnesties have also had upholding effects on the historical process of development of planning policies and practices in Turkey. In this study, domestic and foreign literature reviews were conducted in order to explain the market regulation functionality of planning in a theoretical framework. A total of 23 building amnesty laws that have been enacted between 1948 and 2018 are evaluated in their historical sequence, by making use of official newspapers, research reports, relevant laws and websites of official institutions. The implementation of building development peace legal regulation was evaluated by using reference data for Ankara and Turkey that were retrieved from Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, General Directorate of Infrastructure and Urban Transformation Services. Results of these evaluations are summarized under three titles as, land, buildings and policies. The fact that the beginning of the urbanization experience of our country dates to the second half of the 19th century has enabled it to have a wide and comprehensive planning legislation, practical experience and numerous academic research works. Ankara has had the best examples of these experiences, starting with the preparation of its urban development plans earlier than other provinces, had successful implementations of urban transformation and social housing projects. These experiences may have contributed to relatively less number of applications from this province for the latest building amnesty act, although some unauthorized building activity still continues in this province. Enforcement of building amnesty laws at various periods and for various reasons caused a dilemma in the property market. The number of applications in the latest amnesty law has reached 7.3 million, which reveals that a large part of the country's building stock is formed by land invasion and/or building without permission. However, it cannot be said that applications in connection to the latest building amnesty act cover all illegal land tenures and unauthorized building stock. It is necessary to determine the statutory statuses of the buildings that have a building registration certificate within the scope of the latest building amnesty act. Expiry date of building registration documents should be defined on the basis of scientific analysis of each building and recorded in the urban development plans. Thus, risk analysis of a registered structure could be made in connection to natural disasters. Keywords: Editing function of planning, amnesty laws, zoning peace law, slum, illegal building