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Photos of Erdogan's Residences Appear on Government Websites
(Ha'aretz) Zvi Bar'el - After taking a photo in Istanbul with a cellphone camera, Natalie Oknin sent it back to Israel in a WhatsApp message, saying: "Look at Erdogan's house. See how beautiful it is." Turks know that using the term "Erdogan" on social media immediately sets off alarms in the surveillance computers of the Turkish intelligence services. From 2014 through 2019, 129,000 internet users in Turkey were charged with "insulting the president of Turkey." Erdogan has built a number of palatial residences at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. The presidential palace in Ankara, the White Palace, was built in 2014 at a cost of over $650 million. In August 2020, Erdogan inaugurated a new presidential palace near Lake Van in eastern Turkey. Last July, the architect who planned Erdogan's summer residence north of Marmaris released pictures of the palace, completed two years ago at a cost of $74 million. All these palatial structures have been photographed inside and out, with the images appearing on government websites, yet no one has been put on trial for publishing the pictures.