Once upon a time in a far away land there was a small village nestled at the foot of a mountain. Surrounded on three sides by a great river the inhabitants led a quiet life farming and fishing, rising at dawn and gathering at sunset in their one storey houses to eat and swap stories. Each household lived peacefully isolated from the goings on in the larger country on the other side of the river. Families grew and multiplied and when a young man returned from his compulsory army service he married, chose a plot and built his house on it. This was the way of things for a hundred years and then the modern world intruded and in the pursuit of development city planners came in and mapped the village. They designated a village centre, drew out ‘official’ boundaries and imposed state law as to what could be built where and when they did this the village swallowed a house.

Working in Sezgin’s estate agency I sometimes hear terrible stories from naive and unfortunate foreign residents who come in to seek our help. Some have had their trust abused and find themselves living in properties to which they are unable to acquire title deeds, others learn that they have paid over the odds for their villa and more still cannot get their builders to complete promised works. It is very rare though that we are approached by Turkish citizens with similar problems, rare but not unheard of. Kerem Ünsür is one of those whose sad story has come to feature regularly in our daily conversation.

Kerem is a boat captain with a smiling friendly wife and two bright children for whom he has high ambitions. His son is studying computing in a city three hours distant and Kerem struggles every month to find the money to pay his student rent and living costs. This winter, after a quiet summer on the river, Kerem sold his tractor to raise the capital to keep afloat and yet the solution to his problem is almost within his grasp. He owns a pretty two bedroom house he would like to sell in the afore mentioned river-locked village and we have a buyer who wants it. Kerem himself moved to live with his wife’s family on the other side of the river so that his children could get to school more easily. Apart from occasional tenants the house he built with his own hands lies empty, perched forlornly on a steeply sloping hillside in the very centre of the village. The house sits in the crook of the main road immediately beneath the imam’s house and directly above the village headman’s office and the mosque. Kerem’s unobtrusive house is the silent witness to all the comings and goings of the local people. It is also not his house anymore.

When the authorities first came to the village in 1987 Kerem’s house along with 95% of the other houses was given the status of official ‘sqautter’s house’. The government recognised the existence of the house and granted him a ‘tapu tahsis’ document – the stage before a proper title deed - which entitled him to pass the property on to his children and to sell, should he choose to, the right to use the property to a third party (like a long leasehold). This was just the first part of a long process of re-designation that the little house would experience. İn 1995 a wealthy businessman arrived in the area. He had plans to build a luxury hotel immediately on the other side of the river but the status of the land he was targetting gave him a problem. The land (although on the mainland side of the river) was according to official maps part of the village and therefore affected by the rules that protected the land surrounding the remains of a large ruined Lycian city that lay above the village.

Undaunted and using his big city cunning the businessman set to work. The village headman, a florid and corrupt glutton was easily bought and in a few short weeks had applied to central government to dissassociate itself from the coveted land and to have its boundaries redrawn. The plan was sold to the villagers as a realignment with another local town centre (20 miles away) which offered them some tax breaks as they would be reclassified as an ‘official’ village instead of as an adjunct to Dalyan (only 3 miles away). Ignorant of the long term repercussions and the business plan and black money driving the deal and trusting their headman to act in their interest the local people assented. New legislation was pushed through by the mannon driven determination of the headman and the contacts of the businessman. The desired land was seperated from the village and it’s protection laws, the businessman built the hotel and the headman bought a car and built an extension to his house with his fat kickback. What happened to Kerem went unnoticed for several years until this impoverished man decided to trade his only asset in order to try to ensure the future of his children.

The village had been visited by planners during the status reassignment period and these men noted each dwelling and who they belonged to. However they were not local men, they could have been but instead the businessmen and village headman brought in men from a nearby town and embezzled part of the money paid to them. These untrained individuals wandered around the village making notes and deciding what belonged to whom. When they got to Kerem’s house they debated it’s ownership and decided that because of it’s location it must be the imam’s house and therefore communal village property. No one knocked on Kerem’s door to ask him who the house belonged to and based upon the recommendation of the faceless men his house slid between his fingers and became owned by everybody in the village. His own property was listed as being where the current imam lives (and shows no signs of moving out of).

Further philandering and gerrymandering of boundaries by an ex province governor who has also bought land in the village has led to the village being remapped again in 2006 and this was when Kerem’s disastrous situation came to light. He has applied to have the mistake corrected but without the financial wherewhithal to lubricate the request it may not be rectified. Without the reassignment we cannot help him sell or lease his house and thus ensure the future security of his family – his house will remain swallowed. This may sadly be a story that does not end happily ever after.