Exiled by high rents: A growing number of people are getting priced out of İstanbul
İSTANBUL – In 2020, Emirhan Yılmaz was living in a single-room apartment in Maltepe, İstanbul. His rent was 500 TL a month and his salary as a shipyard worker was about 10,000 TL.
“But now, even if I rent with three or four other roommates, the cost per person would be 10,000 liras,” Yılmaz said, adding that updated salaries range between 25,000 to 30,000 TL.
Originally from the Black Sea town of Sinop, Yılmaz, 27, moved to İstanbul six years ago and adapted well to the city. But as time passed and rent prices began to increase faster than official inflation in recent years, he began to realize he was working mainly to pay the rent.
“When almost half of my money was going to rent, I couldn’t stand it anymore,” Yılmaz told Turkey recap.
“It might sound overly dramatic but really, big old İstanbul seemed okay with everyone but me. I felt unwanted and went back to my hometown,” he added.
Yılmaz is one of many recent exiles from İstanbul. The city of 16 million has seen a growing flight of residents, many of them driven out by steep rent hikes and the wider availability of remote work in the post-pandemic era.
According to official data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), more than two million citizens migrated from İstanbul to other cities in Turkey between 2018 and 2022. One in five of the departees said their reason for moving was to find “better housing and living conditions”.
Hard times
Another former İstanbul resident, Mert Kara, a 35-year-old electrician, said he used to live comfortably on 15,000 liras a month. But the situation has changed, so last year, he returned to his family house in Aksaray.
“Before I left, even though I made 15,000 or 20,000 liras [a month], it was not enough,” Kara told Turkey recap.
“I always thought that I could cover one debt with another and the hard times would pass, but as the famous online meme says: ‘Hard times are over, now there are even harder times ahead,’” he said. “That’s how my life is. Those hard days never passed.”
Eventually, Kara said he struggled to both pay rent and buy food, and he could no longer ignore his family's advice to return to Aksaray.
“I finally agreed with them,” he said. “I wasn't working in a proper job anyway. Now that I'm in Aksaray, I don’t pay rent. I can at least save some money."
Pay old debts with new debts
According to data provided by the real estate valuation platform Endeksa, the average rent in İstanbul exceeded 17,000 Turkish liras at the end of November 2023.
Meryem Güler, 32, who has been unemployed for a long time and currently lives in Halıcıoğlu, İstanbul with her husband, said they have been trying to pay the rent with loans from their neighbors for a while.
“We paid off our debts with other debts,” Güler said, adding that for her, paying rent involves several sacrifices.
“To pay the rent, I have to cut down on my living expenses … and cultural activities. Not taking part in them depresses me,” she told Turkey recap.
“On top of that,” she continued. “I constantly think about what to do the next day, about how I will get some food tomorrow … and what else we can stop doing to save some money. So, rent hits us twice.”
Esra Ece Kutlu, an activist working with disadvantaged groups and people experiencing homelessness, told Turkey recap that with rising inflation, the issue of housing has become a serious problem for many people in İstanbul.
According to Kutlu, a growing number of people are moving back in with their families, sharing flats or becoming homeless due to the cost of living.
“Courts swarm with lease disputes”
İstanbul Planning Agency (İPA) data show that between 2020 and 2022, rents increased by 1.6 times globally, while the increase in İstanbul was 5.2 times.
The agency’s November 2023 report states that “it has become impossible for the middle and low-income groups to buy housing, and renting is not affordable for the low and middle-income groups.”
Speaking to Turkey recap, Global Equality and Inclusion Network Association President Ayşe Kaşıkırık said citizens’ housing needs should be managed by the principles of a social state, but “unfortunately” the system does not work that way.
“Being able to afford a house or rent has come to define happiness, and the motivation is mere survival,” Kaşıkırık said, adding a June 2022 regulation capping yearly rent increases also pits tenants and landlords against each other.
According to Kaşıkırık, although the law defines an upper limit for annual rent increase rates, it is not practiced in real life scenarios.
“Courts swarm with lease disputes nowadays due to lack of control,” Kaşıkırık said. “Landlords fight tenants on the streets. And there will be more of it …”
In Turkey, the increase in rent prices used to be calculated on the basis of the annual inflation average, but when official inflation spiked in 2022, Turkish Parliament passed a regulation that summer setting an upper limit of 25 percent for yearly rent hikes.
In a closed-door meeting in December, Finance Min. Mehmet Şimşek allegedly told business and finance representatives that the limitation would not be extended after July 1, 2024.
In the meantime, the effective rent control continues to create large gaps between the rents paid by new tenants and old tenants, while the number of eviction lawsuits and tensions between landlords and tenants increased.
“Too difficult financially”
Another recent departee, Zeynep Habeş, 58, studied preschool education but works as a textile worker because she could not find relevant employment. She moved to Kilis three months ago with her family of four.
“Living in İstanbul has become too difficult financially. Especially when you are paid the minimum wage,” Habeş said. “Rents skyrocketed. We left İstanbul a month before my lease expired because the landlord had given his other house a pretty unfair raise. We were afraid that we would be next.”
Even though Habeş highlighted a fair amount of problems with life in the big city, she was not happy with the exile status that was forced upon her.
“Moving out of the city we learned to live with for so many years was too much, it has worn us out,” Habeş told Turkey recap. “It is definitely not easy. It has almost been a year, but we are still not acclimated to this place.”
Political scientist Can Kakışım said that although the rent increase pushes certain people out of the city, the vacancies are easily filled.
“The rate of circulation is too high,” he said.
According to Kakışım, a flat where one person used to stay is now shared by two or three people, and there has yet to be a population decrease in the city.
He went on, saying there is always someone willing to move to İstanbul for low-income jobs, referring to the city’s migrant and refugee population.
“There are also foreigners who are not reflected in the unemployment figures, and also refugees,” Kakışım told Turkey recap. “They are exploited a lot, especially in unskilled jobs, and they are made to work like slaves.”
“In other words, there is no decrease in population in the country and the city, and since those houses are not left empty, the [pressure on rent prices] can somehow continue,” he added. “Of course, this causes a sharp decrease in the quality of life in general, leading the city to become even more uninhabitable.”
Oğul Köseoğlu translated this article from Turkish.
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