The US has sold its former Ankara embassy building and plot of land to Istanbul-based TY Gayrimenkul, an Ashan Group company. Semsettin Hanci, the Ashan board chairman, informed news outlet Patronlar Dunyasi of the sale.

The acquisition of the “coupon” plot cost TY “a significant figure”, but the figure is unknown because the deal is subject to a confidentiality agreement.

TY has not yet decided what to develop on the plot. It apparently snapped up the opportunity to make the purchase as it was a once-in-a-century opportunity to pick up such a valuable piece of real estate.

The embassy building, located on Hosdere Ataturk Boulevard, was built in 1930. It is registered as a 3rd Degree Archaeological Conservation Site. That rules out the development of various real estate projects that require approvals from authorities.

The 23-acre plot is made up of four parcels of land.

Ashan Yemek, owned by the Hanci family of Trabzon province, is a 30-year-old catering company. It is known for providing services to mega-infrastructure projects including Istanbul Airport and the 1915 Canakkale Bridge.

The company is Turkey’s third largest catering enterprise and the biggest owned by Turkish entrepreneurs.

Ashan launched TY four years ago.

The US arrives

On November 11, 1930, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey proclaimed in 1923, received Washington DC’s first ambassador to Ankara, Joseph C. Grew, at his forest farm.

Ataturk Orman Ciftligi (AOC, or Ataturk Forest Farm) was established personally by Ataturk in 1925.

If you take a look at the photograph published with this article or the related video footage here, Grew is seen standing next to Ataturk, while knitting his eyebrows and putting his hands on his sides.

His gestures can be interpreted as related to how the US Congress at the time was in a fury over heroin factories in Istanbul. Ataturk went on to close the factories during the 1930s.

“Looters”

In 2014, the US purchased a 37,000-square metre land plot located within the AOC from the Turkish government-run Housing Development Administration (TOKI).

The transaction was illegal. It openly violated regulations drawn up to protect the forest farm so could be seen as tantamount to looting. The Ankara branch of the Chamber of Architects was denied access to the sales protocol. It was classified as a “commercial secret”.

In 2017, it was revealed that the US had paid $88mn for the property.

On August 22, 2022, the US embassy moved to its newly built complex in the AOC located in Cukurambar district. In 2023, the old building was put up for sale.

Erdogan’s neighbour

The US is not alone in looting the AOC. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Bestepe palace is also built on a plot within the farm.

Webpage: The US has become a neighbour of Erdogan, who built his palace in Bestepe district.

In open sight, Erdogan provided the US with an illegal land plot in Ankara, while at the same time blaring headlines in the media talked about Turkey’s leader challenging the American hegemony.

International politics is a high-level business. Perhaps what we had here was Erdogan aiming to distract the attention of the US while undermining the hegemony behind its back.

The CHP threatens America

On September 26, the spotlight was shone on the illegal US embassy complex by Turkey’s main opposition leader, Republican People’s Party (CHP) chair Ozgur Ozel, a politician proving so useless in taking on the Erdogan regime that Turks have taken to calling him the “minister of opposition”.

On the same day, US prosecutors filed an indictment charging New York City Mayor Eric Adams with accepting bribes from Turkish nationals in exchange for providing an illegal permit that enabled the opening of the Turkish House (Turkevi) consulate in NYC despite unresolved safety concerns.

At the time, Erdogan happened to be in New York, attending the UN General Assembly. After the indictment hit the news bulletins, he rushed back to Turkey, missing a dinner hosted by US President Joe Biden for participants of the annual UN event.

Avoiding questions on the Adams case was a smart move. Turkey’s “minister of opposition”, meanwhile, became the first official to comment on the Turkish House bribery allegations, while standing by the building at the centre of the allegations.

Video: To the right of Ozel is the CHP’s shadow foreign minister Ilhan Uzgel. He is making a sour face as Ozel makes some scandalous statements that will have a historical value.

“Turkey is not a country that needs to give bribes to build a premises here, it is not in such a weak state,” declared Ozel.

From Ozel’s indignant remark, it would seem to follow that if Adams was really bribed, the investigators should not actually be looking for a crime committed by some Turkish nationals, but for a crime committed by the Turkish state.

The minister of opposition, of course, was not finished, saying: “If we have received some gestures while acquiring such a building that we are all proud of [he is talking about the Turkevi), we have made bigger gestures in assigning such a magnificent land plot to the US for its new embassy complex in Ankara.”

Leaving aside the realisation that it is such an intensely proud error-prone fool who is heading up the Turkish opposition, what we have here is the CHP party chief publicly giving the impression that there might be bribes to reveal as regards the acquisition of the US embassy land plot at Ataturk Forest Farm.

The comedy is that Ozel claims that if you follow the CHP line of succession, you find that it is him sitting in Ataturk’s chair. But that is not actually correct. The CHP that was launched in 1923 by Ataturk was shut down by Turkey’s 1980 military coup regime, along with all other political parties.

The CHP that we see today was launched in 1992 by Deniz Baykal, a bright political entrepreneur who had an interesting approach when it came to an intra-party system of promotion as well as to the delivery by the party of outsourcing contracts. Baykal created the party because he was unable to get elected as leader of the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP).

The tragedy we are left with is that there are millions in Turkey who believe that they vote for Ataturk’s party.