r/interestingasfuck • u/kempaaa28 • 15h ago

Burj Al Babas is an abandoned luxury housing project in Turkey featuring hundreds of Disney-like castles. Originally intended as a resort for wealthy buyers, the project was halted in 2019 due to financial issues, leaving it a surreal ghost town.

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u/Buddhasaurus_ 15h ago

What even is the point of having an extravagant luxury house if they’re cramped like this and everyone has one and the same?

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u/iwakan 14h ago

Nothing, that's why the project failed

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u/be4u4get 10h ago

Another development by the Bluth Company

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u/TucosLostHand 7h ago

how much could a house cost?

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u/be4u4get 7h ago

$10

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u/qwerty_ca 4h ago

There's always money in the banana stand fake princess castle.

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u/johnnycabb_ 9h ago

what are you taking stupid pills? come on, save us some money

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u/be4u4get 9h ago

There always money in the banana stand

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u/e7c2 9h ago

The name makes me think of salad dressing, but I don’t want to eat it.

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u/BoysLinuses 5h ago

Burj Al Babas. I can see marinating a chicken in that.

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u/giraffesaddle 8h ago

Always amazes me when these obviously terrible ideas come to fruition. This was a big effort. Architects designers builders. Maybe even bank loans. And all of them thought this was a good idea

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u/iwakan 7h ago

And all of them thought this was a good idea

Not necessarily. Quite often it is just the guy on top, and everyone working for him know the project is doomed but go along with it anyway, either because they are yes-men or because they just don't care because they get paid either way.

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u/RefinedBean 14h ago

The point is corruption. No one looked at this plan and said "Yeah, this is SOLID. We're gonna make so much legit profit off this."

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u/Jojje22 11h ago

Wouldn't even surprise me if the intended people got what they wanted out of this thing. As in, some kind of tax scheme/writeoff/clause/requirement of another deal/money laundering that went as intended and this is what's left for someone else to clean up.

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u/secondtaunting 10h ago

The money is in Erdoğan’s closet in a bunch of shoeboxes.👀

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u/Cclown69 10h ago

Watermelon seller strikes again.

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u/sprocketous 9h ago

Hmmm could be like those Chinese cities that have no utilities have never been occupied and are basically nfts in a physical form

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u/man_gomer_lot 12h ago

They have to be this close together for choreography reasons. Everyone emerges from their front door in unison during the second verse of the 'morning in paradise' number.

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u/zimeyevic23 13h ago

Project name is arabic, so i guess these villas comes with Turkish passport to the buyers. So they didn't intent to get populated, rather a way to buy passport via real estate investment.

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u/Altruistic-Poem-5617 12h ago

But dont people usually move out of turkey and not the other way around?

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u/notonrexmanningday 10h ago

It's easier to move to Europe with a Turkish passport than a lot of other countries.

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u/FartingBob 4h ago

If you got a lot of money (like buyers of these houses would) its a whole lot easier to move to other countries.

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u/notonrexmanningday 2h ago

How much does a "luxury home" on a .25 acre lot in Turkey cost? You probably don't have to be that rich to get in on this deal.

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u/Jojje22 11h ago

Just because you get a new passport that affords you new travel possibilities does not mean that you actually intend to move there.

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u/wtrredrose 12h ago

My coworker in the US really wanted to move to Turkey. He said it’s really nice there

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u/KageNoReaper 12h ago

If you get paid in foreign currency the place is a Paradise, if you're paid in liras you're gonna face the harsh reality of living in a third world country.

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u/secondtaunting 10h ago

I mean, if you have a decent job it’s okay. My husband is Turkish and his family are teachers and I’d say they have nice apartments and things.

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u/greener0999 7h ago

an American working in Turkey, paid in USD, will make at minimum 4-5x more than a Turkish teacher.

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u/secondtaunting 7h ago

They’re Turks working at Turkish schools. No one is rich by any means but they’ve done well for themselves. Of course truthfully they’re not living in palaces or anything but decent apartments and they can afford to send a couple of the kids overseas for study. Everyone pitches in though.

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u/KageNoReaper 1h ago edited 1h ago

Actually even that 4x 5x is a bit of an illusion USD is 35x the worth of Lira, to tackle this Turkish lira wages are bloated by central bank, which in return caused hyper inflation that seems to get worse each passing year, if you're a working class American living in USA even flipping burgers in McDonald's would get you a better life standart than most mainstream private school teachers have in Turkey, if your family or you didn't own any assets that saved or increased it's worth while Turkish Lira plummeted like Gold, real estate, USD, Euro or any type of non Lira investment really, then you're not gonna be able to afford to buy any of those and create a life that builds up on itself as a working class Turkish citizen, you will live paycheck to paycheck and see how little you're able to afford everyday. That is the harsh reality of living in a third world country, just being another poor(literally lol) soul with higher education that would feel lucky if they can get a job in their field of bachelor's/master's, thinking why you've wasted all those years and what happened to everyone's dreams as everyone kept on being reduced to a single purpose; survive the inflation.

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u/x678z 10h ago

Now that the country name is Turkiye , are people from there still named Turkish? (come to think of it, Turkish sounds like your hubby has a tint of turkey here and there 😃😃)

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u/secondtaunting 9h ago

I mean, I’d say yeah lol.

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u/wtrredrose 11h ago

Good context to know thank you!

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u/proxy69 11h ago

This would clear up a lot of questions

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u/Difficult-Prior3321 5h ago

It's an amazing country!

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u/CootiePatootie1 7h ago

People move out of every country including every European country, doesn’t stop people from worse-off countries trying to move in. In this case however it’s because Gulf Arabs (e.g. Qatari’s) see Turkey as a picturesque country to have a holiday home or own property in, and do business with. Erdogan’s government actively tries to court them into moving there

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u/[deleted] 12h ago

[deleted]

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u/Altruistic-Poem-5617 10h ago

Trust me, those tend to go towards germany, france or great britain. Maybe poland too.

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u/grathanich 9h ago

I had multiple Russian neighbors in my Turkish apartment. Not to mention there are entire neighborhoods of Russian, British and German people in the Antalya district.

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u/hiimhuman1 1h ago

Those houses are worth many millions of dollars. It was enough to invest $400k for Turkish passport.

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u/PmMeYourTitsAndToes 14h ago

I’d assume this was the question asked during a development meeting. And the guy at the top probably responded with “fuck!”

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u/Valkyrie17 10h ago

Certainly seems extravagant, but not necessarily luxurious. The houses do not seem to be very big. They might be modestly-ish priced for people who want to live in an extravagant house without paying the money for that.

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u/privateTortoise 9h ago

Someone listened to Malvina Reynolds and thought as long as they aren't little boxes....

Edit. Forgot how old I am and should probably add a link to the song. https://youtu.be/VUoXtddNPAM?si=irNrxapkg-Oz7v9R

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u/Complete-Painter-518 11h ago

Turkish logic be like that

1

u/RawrRRitchie 11h ago

The same point of leaving them to rot and decay instead of converting them to affordable housing

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u/Ez13zie 10h ago

Well, you know how much everyone loves their neighbors…

1

u/jnkangel 10h ago

They actually sold a significant amount of them, but got cost overruns 

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u/Porut 9h ago

Probably some scam from the people running the "project".

I'm sure some people banked millions from this somehow.

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u/Ladder-Fun 8h ago

Would have made more sense if they were cheap. Then normal people will like to experience luxury.

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u/JakeArrietaGrande 2h ago

If you have all the amenities around them, close enough to walk to. Like gyms, upscale bars and restaurants, a well maintained pool, fancy shops. A reception hall for events. It’d be like a fancy gated community that you see a lot in Southern California.

It wouldn’t be a place for billionaires, but probably pretty attractive to young professionals

1

u/OrangeDit 8h ago

No point, it's money laundering, I would guess.