"In the Turkish countryside, hundreds of identical neo-gothic villas stand starkly in the hillside, a project like something from a Disney film-set, which has been left to rot in Turkey's recession.
The stunning black-capped white villas rise in a valley beneath hillsides covered in pines, like miniature Neuschwanstein Castles planted in the East.
The 732 villas in the Bolu region each cost around £400,000, but they stand empty after Turkey's economy took a dive last year.
The ambitious Burj Al Babas project was supposed to entice Arab buyers; rather than travel to Europe, they could have a Medieval castle in Turkey.
But the sprawling mass of unfinished dwellings stand as a totem of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's failure to overcome his country's economic situation.
After years of growth the economy took an unexpected downturn, AFP reported, with many economists predicting a recession for the country in 2019.
Investors in the Gulf defaulted on payments due to dropping oil prices which has left the developers £78m short, after they managed to flog around half of the little castles.
The stunning development is emblematic of many less spectacular builds across Turkey which have been left to rot as the economy falters.
Turkey suffered a currency crisis in August during a diplomatic spat with the United States over the detention of an American pastor, later released, as well as concerns over domestic monetary policy.
Erdogan has railed against high interest rates, describing them as the 'mother and father of all evil'.
At one point during the US-Turkey row, the lira traded to lows around seven against the dollar.
But after the lira's dramatic fall in the summer, the bank made an aggressive rate hike in September of 625 basis points (6.25 percentage points) to 24 percent.
Despite legal battles over whether the Sarot Group can still sell the villas, their deputy chairman Mezher Yerdelen told AFP he expects it will be completed in October this year." - dailymail.co.uk
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