In a windowless and rather gloomy room in the depths of the Silicon Building, in the sprawling campus of Middle East Technical University (Metu) in Ankara, an idea straight out of George Orwell is earning bucketfuls of money. Here, surrounded by computer terminals, engineers are digitising images of every building in every street in every town and village in Turkey, and passing on the information gleaned from them to municipal authorities across the country.
This is the hub of a remarkable high-technology company set up just under three years ago that checks the uses to which each building is put and compares that information to what the building’s permit allows. The data is then passed on to the authorities, who can revoke or reissue a licence for that building if the occupiers are found to be in breach of their existing permits. It is one way in which Turkey’s resource-poor municipal authorities earn extra cash to pay for infrastructure investments and to run their towns and villages more effectively.
