Elderly Diyarbakır man regrets buying shoddy home from gov't housing agency

Vecdi Erbay/ DUVAR

76-year-old retiree Adem Yalçın spent decades in Diyarbakır's central district of Bağlar before purchasing a home from Turkey's Mass Housing Administration (TOKİ), something that he now regrets due to the location and poor quality of the home.

“I've spent my whole life here, if my children hadn't convinced me I wouldn't have bought a TOKİ house, what am I even doing over there,” Yalçın said while at a coffeehouse in Bağlar.

After signing the contract, Yalçın was told the keys would be delivered in nine months, but the process actually took two years. Upon finally entering his new home, Yalçın found that it was essentially uninhabitable.

“We went to the house and there was nothing. Water, electric, heating, elevators, none of them were working. Everyone with homes in the building wrote what was missing, and it made for a very long list. We went and gave it to the adminstrators, and they said 'ok, we'll take care of it all'. But they didn't do anything,” Yalçın said. 

“Since there was no water, we gathered and marched. We came up against the security guards and a fight broke out. After that, the water was connected. In fact, the water system was connected after we moved in. There wasn't pipes or anything,” he added.

TOKİ has built hundreds of thousands of apartment buildings in cities throughout Turkey, though many have a reputation for lacking character and being built with poor materials and shoddy workmanship.

Yalçın said that the basic foundation of the building was solid but that the worksmanship was practically nonexistent. He said that the glass in the doors and windows was not properly affixed, making it seem like the glass would fall out when closing the door. For this reason, the glass in the building's entrance door was broken, according to Yalçın, who said that despite requests to have it fixed, no one has done so.

While most of the building's problems have been fixed by management or by the residents themselves, the two major problems that remain are the lack of heating and the non-functional elevator. The latter is not a major problem for Yalçın, but it is for other residents, including a woman with a kidney illness who is on dialysis and lives on the fourth floor.

“Her children come and bring her down the stairs, and then take her back in their arms. People are dealing with this kind of suffering, isn't it a shame?” Yalçın said.

Since his home does not have heating, he also does not have hot water, which forces Yalçın and his wife to shower at their children's house.

“A new administrator came, hung up a huge flag, and said we will put an end to all of your problems. If only he did what he said,” Yalçın said

“We are the victims of TOKİ,” Yalçın said, adding that he wanted not just his voice but that of his neighbors to be heard.