Gizem Baburhan stepped into a tiny house on wheels she rented in the Aegean vineyards and saw the future of Turkey’s COVID-19-ravaged tourism industry.
“This minimalist life offered us priceless peace,” Baburhan said. “I hope in the future, we will own a tiny house and tour the world with a home on our backs.”
The tiny house movement — a fad that gained momentum in the US in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis — appears to have caught on in Turkey during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo: AFP
The unimposing wood and composite metal structures resemble spruced-up sheds on wheels or sawn-off trailer homes.
Yet the Turkish firms that make them say they have barely been able to keep up with demand in the past year.
YAKO Groups chief executive Galip Olmez said that he received only “sporadic orders” after introducing the idea to Turkey in 2017.
Photo: AFP
“If we compare 2020 with the previous year, the orders have increased 20-fold,” Olmez said without disclosing precise numbers.
Architect Pelin Dustegor said that most of her Casa Lokomotif tiny house company’s clients were “from the tourism industry looking for camping concepts.”
“We had just under 250 orders in all of 2019 and this shot up to 4,500 a month in 2020,” Dustegor said. “There has been tremendous interest.”
Turkey is perhaps best known to global tourists as the place of golden beaches and all-inclusive luxury hotels, but the economic shock of the pandemic and suspicions that people could shy away from crowds for years to come have some Turkish tourism firms revising their plans.
Dustegor said that the tiny houses’ popularity with tourism firms is rooted in their low investment cost and the potential to turn a profit within three-and-a-half years.
The houses can also be parked on land without a building permit because they have the status of a vehicle in Turkey.
People between their late 30s and early 40s also tend to buy them as an investment and then rent them out, Dustegor said.
Caglar Gokgun rents out the tiny house he bought and parked in the middle of a vineyard on the Aegean Sea.
“People will want to stay in nature in small groups rather than at a 500-person hotel,” Gokgun said. “No one will want to wait in line for an open buffet.”
Baburhan said that the New Year holiday she spent with her husband at Gokgun’s vineyard home was like being in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
“We didn’t know what to expect at first, but we found ourselves in a tiny, fully fledged house in the heart of a wonderful vineyard. We quickly got used to the house and felt like we have been living there for years,” she said.
Olmez said that his firm produces homes ranging from 15m2 40m2 — about the size of a small studio or a hotel room.
Their prices range from US$17,000 to US$30,000. It is hard to buy a small house in Istanbul for less than US$70,000.
Clients who want to put down a tiny house on land they already own are responsible for hooking up the water and electricity, while the firm builds the home, and takes care of the furnishings and design.
“We see tiny houses as the future of tourism in Turkey,” Olmez said in his tiny house showroom on the outskirts of Istanbul.
Olmez said that a year of lockdowns has prompted many to reassess the benefit of spending time in concrete apartment blocks.
“Humanity has begun to return to its roots,” said Olmez, as two young women checked out a cabin on wheels in his showroom. “People should not be scared of minimalism. It does not shrink life, but liberates it.”
The US and the Philippines plan to announce new sites as soon as possible for an expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which gives the Western power access to military bases in the Southeast Asian country. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr last month granted the US access to four military bases, on top of five existing locations under the 2014 EDCA, amid China’s increasing assertiveness regarding the South China Sea and Taiwan. Speaking at the Basa Air Base in Manila, one of the existing EDCA sites, US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the defense agreements between the two countries
‘DUAL PURPOSE’: Upgrading the port is essential for the Solomon Islands’ economy and might not be military focused, but ‘it is not about bases, it is about access,’ an analyst said The Solomon Islands has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, a Solomon Islands official said yesterday. China Civil Engineering Construction Co (CCECC) was the only company to submit a bid in the competitive tender, Solomon Islands Ministry of Infrastructure Development official Mike Qaqara said. “This will be upgrading the old international port in Honiara and two domestic wharves in the provinces,” Qaqara said. Responding to concerns that the port could be deepened for Chinese naval access, he said there would be “no expansion.” The Solomon
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS: The US destroyer’s routine operations in the South China Sea would have ‘serious consequences,’ the defense ministry said China yesterday threatened “serious consequences” after the US Navy sailed a destroyer around the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) in the South China Sea for the second day in a row, in a move Beijing claimed was a breach of its sovereignty and security. The warning came amid growing tensions between China and the US in the region, as Washington pushes back at Beijing’s growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea, a strategic waterway it claims virtually in its entirety. On Thursday, after the US sailed the USS Milius guided-missile destroyer near the Paracel Islands, China said its navy and
Seven stories above a shop floor hawking cheap perfume and nylon underwear, Thailand’s “shopping mall gorilla” sits alone in a cage — her home for 30 years despite a reignited row over her captivity. Activists around the world have long campaigned for the primate to be moved from Pata Zoo, on top of a Bangkok mall, with singer Cher and actor Gillian Anderson adding their voices in 2020. However, the family who owns Bua Noi — whose name translates as “little lotus” — have resisted public and government pressure to relinquish the critically endangered animal. The gorilla has lived at Pata for more