Turkey's ‘frugal’ first lady who likes to splurge
She claims to lead a “humble and modest” life in accordance with Muslim values, whiling away time in the palace kitchen fermenting apples and turning them into vinegar.
While her husband President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has amassed a £139million fortune with at least three palaces across Turkey, his “shopaholic” wife Emine likes nothing more than spending money. Emine’s jet-set lifestyle is a whirlwind of one shopping trip after another where her particular passions are designer clothes and expensive antiques.
As a quarter of her country live in extreme poverty and almost two million live on just £3 a day, the president’s wife boasts she drinks specialist white tea at £1,500 a kilogramme … and drinks it from gold leaf glasses worth £250 each. She once closed down a shopping mall in Brussels to go on a designer shopping spree and while accompanying her husband on an official visit to Warsaw in Poland blew through more than £37,000 while browsing an antiques bazaar. Any items she found would no doubt be needed for the sprawling palace Erdogan has constructed in the foothills outside the Turkish capital Ankara.
Covering an area of 1.6sq miles the palatial complex cost over £500m to build with no expense spared on its fixture and fittings. From silk wallpaper costing as much as £2,000 a roll to £36,000 for each pair of double doors that are needed for the hundreds of rooms. One estimate has the bill for more than 400 extra-large double doors that measure 3.2m high by 2m wide at over £5m. Add in the 450 single doors needed and the final bill for doors has been put at over £26m. In keeping with the no expense spared build even carpeting for the 366,000 square foot palace is more than £7m.
Critics of the cavernous building have said it is so extravagant that it would have left Saddam Hussein blushing. Others have derided the architecture of the palace saying it looks like more like a Chinese railway station than anything from the Ottoman era.
Emile ended up being rapped after a newspaper that supports her husband’s AKP party attempted to portray the 60-year-old as someone who watches every penny of the household budget. The article revealed how Emine managed the palace kitchen and insisted on recycling lemon and apple peels to turn them into vinegar. It also boasted of how the palace kitchen used olive and date pits to make sauces and suggested that the population follow Emine’s lead in consuming white tea from the Rize region of Turkey.
While white tea is readily available what the article failed to mention is the tea Emine has served at the Palace costs up to £1,500 for a kilogramme. The article led to Emine and her husband being termed hypocrites on social media.
Some photos of the Erdogans’ £500million palace:
