Displeasure with state housing administration at all-time high
▻http://www.todayszaman.com/anasayfa_displeasure-with-state-housing-administration-at-all-time-high
Plus de 100 000 plaintes d’habitants contre l’Administration du logement Collectif en Turquie :
The fact is that TOKİ already faced serious discontent from its customers before even the first round of 500,000 homes had been completed. Many of the customer complaints had already been taken to court. In fact, the number of complaints against TOKİ snowballed.
The range of general complaints was wide, from apartments being handed over to customers very late to portions of the homes being incomplete. Many of those filing a lawsuit against TOKİ won their cases and were awarded compensation by the courts.
A report issued in 2012 by the Court of Accounts (Sayıştay) draws attention to the fact that the number of court cases against TOKİ had swelled to reach 30,000. It also focused on the compensation being awarded by the courts. At the beginning of 2014, the number of court cases against TOKİ had reached 100,000 in total.
Nombre qui pourrait s’alourdir car nombreux habitants ont peur de s’engager devant la justice. Même les avocats des plaintifs restent anonymes de peur des représailles de TOKI :
One fact of note is that many of the lawyers representing TOKİ residents in court opt to keep a low profile and routinely ask to be cited anonymously when speaking to media out of fear of possible retaliation from TOKİ.
In other words, Turkey has found itself in a period when even lawyers fear becoming victims. When Sunday’s Zaman asked TOKİ about the number of court cases against the administration, they declined to respond.
Most TOKİ residents face similar problems regarding poor housing quality, yet many opt to remain silent, as opening a court case is a costly process. And many people, in the excitement of being first-time homeowners, simply decide to remain quiet about the problems they are having. There are also those who use their own money to make necessary repairs, and others who sit back and wait to see what sort of results emerge from neighbors’ attempts to attain justice at the courts
Alors que la justice donnait raison aux plaintifs jusque là, les dernières élections locales semblent constitués un retournement de la situation avec des pressions politiques sur les juges. Le coût des compensations financières commençait à être important effectivement :
After the March 30 elections, a new development looked set to stop this general trend against TOKİ. Though the Supreme Court of Appeals had ruled in favor of plaintiffs, the 13th chamber of the court suddenly changed its stance and began to rule in favor of TOKİ.
Many of the lawyers involved in these cases note, however, that the sudden change in the court’s views on the TOKİ cases seemed to reflect some sort of political pressure being applied.
Another dimension to the switch in the approach of the Supreme Court of Appeals in these cases is the general cost to TOKİ in all of this. Lawyer “T,” drawing attention to the rising costs, said: “If there are 100,000 plaintiffs and the average awarded recompense is TL 15,000, we are talking about total costs of TL 1.5 billion.”
This same lawyer noted that, in Istanbul alone, some TL 70,000-80,000 in compensation has been awarded, with a total bill to TOKİ of some TL 2 billion