Recep Tayyip Erdogan: The ‘new sultan’ now has a new palace – and it has cost Turkish taxpayers £400m

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has faced accusations before of acting like a “sultan” – never more so than when he was made Turkey’s first elected president after 12 years as its prime minister.

But those claims have been given new vigour after it was revealed that he has built himself a palace that is bigger than the White House or Buckingham Palace, occupies more than 1.6 million square feet of land and cost almost £400 million.

Quoted in Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper, finance minister Mehmet Simsek revealed that the majority of the new 1.37 billion lira (£385.3m) budget had already been spent on the residence from public coffers .... http://www.independent.co.uk