Even by Turkish standards, Antepia is a show stopper. Once finished, the 125-acre housing development growing 10 miles south of the city of Gaziantep will boast 19 high-rise apartment buildings, dozens of five-story mansions, 23 waterfront villas, and a manmade lake covering an area of 14 football fields.
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Fatih Ozhelvalci, one of the project's main architects, ticks off one amenity after another: a shopping mall, hotel, nursery, tennis courts, swimming pools, bowling center, and paintball field. "With all this," he says, beaming beneath a white hardhat, in front of the vast construction area, "you can go a year without having to go to Gaziantep."
If it's the antiquities you miss -- Gaziantep, an hour's drive from the border with Syria, is one of the world's oldest cities -- Antepia tries to compensate with plenty of knowing winks to the past. The extravagant waterfront villas, known in Antepia parlance as yalis, take their name from the posh, near-extinct 19th century houses that dot the shores of the Bosphorus straits in Istanbul. The complex's main meeting place, within a stone's throw of the mosque, is called the Agora. Just to the west of it sits the main entertainment venue, a vast amphitheater.
Asked if he is afraid for the project's future should the Turkish housing bubble eventually burst, Fatih responds with a chuckle. Whatever happens, he says, Antepia is too splendid to fail. "Here, you're not only buying an apartment, but a lifestyle," he quips.
Business is booming. Inside Antepia's administrative center -- which features elevator music, brightly-colored faux Ottoman furniture, an elaborate fountain, footbridges, and an abundance of plants -- Antepia's sales team receives an average of 150 potential buyers per week. Most of the first flats and villas scheduled for use by summer 2012 have already sold. As an employee helpfully points out, if the only thing that stands between you and the yali of your dreams is a loan, "there are bank branches upstairs."
Housing developments like Antepia are mushrooming across Turkey. Like some of the Turkish government's more pharaonic projects -- a third bridge over the Bosphorus, an underground tunnel connecting Europe and Asia, and a 30 mile-long canal connecting the Black and Marmara Seas -- Antepia is a telling sign of the country's breathtaking economic boom. Since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's first electoral victory in 2002, Turkey's economic output has tripled, and GDP has expanded at an average clip of 5 percent per year. In the first six months of 2011, the economy surged ahead at more than 10 percent -- the fastest among G-20 nations, exceeding even China.
Yet if the building boom is one of the symptoms of growth, it is also one of its causes. According to the Turkish Contractors Association (TCA), the construction industry contributes about 6 percent to the country's economy. Add to that all the services and sectors linked to construction -- steel, cement and iron production, as well as construction equipment and transport -- and the figure, by the TCA's own estimates, comes to a staggering 30 percent, or roughly $220 billion.
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