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Facility management (FM) is picking up steam in Turkey. However, delays in creating standards and adopting FM as a profession by corporate and public institutions led to an unusual predicament, unlike in Europe and the USA. The purpose of this study is to take an inductive and constructivist approach to explore the extent of maturity in the FM industry within Turkey.

Qualitative understanding of the complexity of the Turkish FM sector drives the design used in the study. All data has been collected through an in-depth interview and semi-structured questionnaire with FM stakeholders.

The findings revealed the perceptions of stakeholders working in various businesses and research institutions in Turkey, including FM organizations, supply markets and educational institutions, regarding the key challenges and opportunities in the business environment.

The trend on Turkish FM revealed a slow growth in FM professionalization, which needs the authority’s attention as the professionalization reduces the unemployment rate, reduces cost and enhances the life cycle of the physical property.

This is the first study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, on Turkish FM that provides comprehensive studies on Turkish FM professionalization trends to draw the attention of policymakers to the need to enact policies that would improve FM professionalism.

This study aims to gain a qualitative understanding of the residents’ perspective on the complexities of built environment management in Turkey. In addition, facility management (FM) is a newly emerging field in Turkey and therefore the paper contributes to the existing knowledge base on the global status of the field.

In-person surveys with the residents in the North Ankara and Dikmen Valley urban transformation projects were evaluated. The data have been collected from 660 residents through surveys using the random sampling method. Chi-square tests were used to examine the frequency and percentage distributions of the data, as well as the relationship between categorical variables. If the expected values in the chi-square analysis were low/insufficient, the Monte Carlo simulation method was used. A value of 0.05 was used as the level of significance, and it was stated that there was a significant relationship/dependency in the case of p < 0.05, and that there was no significant relationship/dependency in the case of p > 0.05.

The research identified that there was a prevailing opinion that professional FM services would likely increase the overall cost of maintenance, but satisfaction was lower in areas where management was carried out by a resident management group. It has been observed that there is a significant dependency between the regions with the answers given to the statements “Management by professional management companies causes an increase in costs” and “Management by the homeowners is more advantageous than working with professional management companies.”

The concept of “gecekondu” is unique to Turkey and the operation, maintenance and quality expectations of gecekondu owners and those of the more affluent residents can be significantly different. This fascinating process of illegal housing-to-urban transformation and the current need for many more urban transformation projects in the country distinguished the Turkish urban transformation approach from other countries. In addition, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no other study in Turkey regarding the FM of urban transformation areas with data of this size.

This chapter aims to examine the linkages between urbanisation, real estate investments and sustainability in Turkey. To do so, theoretical and conceptual frameworks were discussed based on literature review. Through mixed-methods research, primary data were collected via questionnaires from relevant 248 company executives while secondary data were collected from relevant institutions. Data on two case study green buildings were also collected through documents from building owners and project and construction managers. The results show that many urban development, transformation and real estate projects are executed without considering sustainability principles. Thus, nationally, mixed-use real estate and green building projects are limited even though a majority of the companies surveyed (85%) designed and executed projects based on a green structure approach. Generally, the costs of green buildings are higher compared to traditional buildings. There is the need for strategic spatial plans based on reliable cadastre systems, targeting national and regional development in using existing resources efficiently and paying attention to the importance of environmental quality. For the efficiency of real estate markets, advanced real estate market and financing systems and the integration of sustainability principles into decision-making process in planning, design, construction and operation phases of projects should be considered.

The facility management (FM) sector, which is developing rapidly, is making slower progress in Turkey compared to Europe and the USA. This paper aims to research the underlying issues leading to FM practices and offer insights into the implications of FM-related policies, especially for large urban transformation projects.

The study used a mixed-methods research design and collected qualitative data through semi-structured interviews with building/site managers and quantitative data through structured surveys with residents. Forty-nine building/site managers and 660 residents participated in the interview and survey from Turkey’s North Ankara and Dikmen Valley urban transformation projects.

The FM by residents, performed by the managers selected among homeowners, was preferred to the professional FM in Turkey. Education level, age, homeownership and duration of living in the region were associated with selecting FM practices. Cost also had an important place among the selection criteria, and the standard view from the residents was that professional FM would cause a cost increase. However, interviews with building/site managers in North Ankara and Dikmen Valley Urban Transformation areas revealed that a significant part of the problem resulted from insufficient knowledge and experience in FM.

Within the scope of the research, two urban transformation projects in Ankara Province were selected, and the survey was limited to the North Ankara Entrance Urban Transformation Project and Dikmen Valley Urban Transformation Project areas. Although there is a need to improve the understanding of FM in all facilities, built environments and collective buildings, collective buildings in urban transformation areas due to several constraints, those other identified areas are postponed for future study. In addition, collective buildings located in transformation areas differ from others in discussing the social dimension and the impact of management.

Within the scope of the research, two urban transformation projects in Ankara Province were selected, and the survey was limited to the North Ankara Entrance Urban Transformation Project and Dikmen Valley Urban Transformation Project areas. Although there is a need to improve the understanding of FM in all facilities, due to several constraints built environments and collective buildings in urban transformation areas, are postponed for future study. In addition, collective buildings located in transformation areas differ from others in discussing the social dimension and the impact of management.

This study evaluates two different FM approaches: FM by residents and professional FM, implemented in Turkey and identifies the criteria for choosing the FM practice. In addition, both building/site managers and residents evaluate different perspectives on FM. This study is unique because it compares different FM practices in Turkey and the criteria for residents to prefer different FM practices.

Information about the current and future composition of the population in terms of household size and the desired housing preferences provides a good foundation for determining current and future housing needs. The policy-makers and developers can also use such knowledge as a starting point in their housing and commercial real estate investment decisions. In Turkey, urbanization and housing issues have accompanied the growth of industrialization. Within the scope of the country’s urbanization history, various instruments have been used to solve the lack of housing issues. The constructed houses should be accessible or affordable by fixed-income earners in the middle and lower socio-economic classes, who are mostly excluded. In particular, the real estate development sector has taken manageable risks by closely following the changing social and economic conditions and developing a variety of housing concepts. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the housing sector situation and affordability issues and then use time series analysis to present relationships between macroeconomic factors and housing demand in Ankara region.

The approach uses a survey of recent housing projects cover 2016 to 2018 for housing affordability conditions. Also, the study uses the Johansen co-integration test, variance analysis and impulse-response test to explain the relationships between macroeconomic indicators and housing demand for Ankara.

According to the results of time series analysis, the macroeconomic factors are affecting the demand and the number of houses sold. The research results try to find a negative or positive correlation between the numbers of houses sold and the monthly macroeconomic variables. Mortgage interest rates, usage permits, construction permits and household expenditure were found the most correlated with housing sold as a representative proxy of housing demand. This paper claims that current housing affordability is related to current housing supply and demand variables. If housing supply (as construction and usage permits) and income (as interest rates and expenditures) are at favorable levels, then housing transaction volumes increase.

This paper highlights the need to examine how to assist developers to more rapidly develop knowledge and experience to reflect the implications of change in practice. This paper is formulating a housing demand model for real estate developers, using number of house sales and other administrative statistics in Ankara region.

If macroeconomic conditions are stable, then this encourages consumers to invest for housing whether they are affordable or not. According to the results, key factors of housing market are based on interest rates, income expectation and gaining social status. The consumers anymore not only want to buy a house to live and also want to gaining prestige.

The paper not only shows that current price is affordable or not but also supports why price is going up although price is not affordable. The findings identify how the market is developing and adhering to a product model development theory. The paper is different from previous studies because of the use of monthly income and supply proxies together in Turkey with time series model. These results are close to the theoretical expectations and provide good indicators for policy-makers.

This study aims to examine the performance and volatility of Turkey Real Estate Investment Trusts (Turkish REITs) as the world is adjusting to the new normal situation in every aspect of REITs' business activities.

The prices of REITs were acquired from 26 Turkish REITs in this study, but owing to autocorrelation difficulties, 14 Turkish REITs were employed in the analysis. The ten-year long-term bond of the Turkish Government was also utilized and the period of data obtained was based on availability. The performance of Turkish REITs was evaluated using Sharpe's ratio and Treynor's ratio, and the volatility was assessed using MGARCH-BEKK.

The authors found out that Turkish REITs are constantly underperforming and the REITs' returns remain highly volatile and persistent. In addition, findings showed evidence of volatility clustering and the asymmetric impact of shocks. This study further revealed the uniqueness of each of the Turkish REITs due to the lack of evidence of multicollinearity.

However, the limitation of this study is the constraint in obtaining more macro-economic variables of more than ten-years of Turkey's Government bond and the study focused mainly on Turkish REITs.

The result suggests that since Turkish REITs are not mandatory to payout 90% of taxable earnings as dividends, high performance and an appropriate risk management approach are expected. The need for timely revealing performance of T-REITs and associated uncertainty may trigger better performance as discussed in the relationship between disclosure and performance which is recently emphasized in a recent study by Koelbl (2020). With current performance and associated uncertainty in Turkish REITs, the need to protect Turkish REITs investors is highly essential. The result further educates REIT investors that diversification benefits of REITs tend to reduce in extremely risky situations.

This is the first study in the context of Turkish REITs that comprehensively integrated market capitalization of REITs and simultaneous evaluation of performance and the volatility of the Turkish REITs as the world adjusts to the new normal.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence farmers' preference for the use of Islamic banks in Turkey and to investigate their knowledge level and perception about Islamic finance.

Survey data used in this study is obtained by drawing a sample of 1902 farmers who are members of the Agricultural Credit Cooperatives Union (ACCU) from 37 provinces of Turkey. Pearson's Chi-square test is used to analyze the association between the demographic features of farmers, conventional bank usage and Islamic bank usage. Binary logistic regression model is used to estimate the factors influencing the preference for Islamic banks. Explanatory variables include knowledge on Islamic banking and finance, perception of compliance to religion, saving ability and cost concern along with the control variables of Islamic bank branch number in the region and age of respondent. Robustness check is conducted via alternative models using ordinary least squares (OLS) and logistic regression.

Less than 10% of the participant farmers use Islamic banks and 59% declare they know nothing about Islamic banking. Age, education level, income level, nonagricultural income level, saving ability, duration of working in agriculture, land size and region are significantly related to farmers' preference of using Islamic banks. Knowledge level, perception of religious compliance, saving ability and cost concern are statistically significant factors that influence the probability of using Islamic banks.

This study does not include the analysis of the relationship between being religious and using Islamic banks because questions related to the assessment of religious practice were excluded due to the ACCU's sensitivity to investigate personal beliefs. Therefore, future studies can expand the scope of this research by investigating religiousness. The sample is chosen from the ACCU members who are already benefiting from a formal source of credit; therefore, the results should not be attributed to all farmers.

Islamic banks and microfinance institutions' further engagement in the agricultural sector and ACCU's implementation of Islamic finance instruments.

Islamic banks' further diversification in the agricultural sector and ACCU's implementation of Islamic finance instruments.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first to investigate the farmers' perception and preference of Islamic banking in Turkey. The sample size of 1902 is much larger and geographically diversified compared to studies in agricultural finance. This study will be valuable for the agricultural finance empirical studies in Turkey as well as an important addition to the emerging literature on Islamic finance.

This paper aims to investigate asymmetric pricing behaviour and impact of coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic shocks on house price index (HPI) of Turkey and Kazakhstan.

Monthly HPIs and consumer price index (CPI) data ranges from 2010M1 to 2020M5 are used. This study uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model for empirical analysis.

The findings of this study reveal that the Covid-19 pandemic exerted both long-run and short-run asymmetric relationship on HPI of Turkey while in Kazakhstan, the long-run impact of Covid-19 pandemic shock is symmetrical long-run positive effect is similar in both HPI markets.

The main limitations of this study are the study scope and data set due to data constraint. Several other macroeconomic variables may affect housing prices; however, variables used in this study satisfy the focus of this study in the presence of data constraint. HPI and CPI variables were made available on monthly basis for a considerably longer period which guaranteed the ranges of data set used in this study.

Despite the limitation, this study provides necessary information for authorities and prospective investors in HPI to make a sound investment decision.

This is the first study that rigorously and simultaneously examines the pricing behaviour of Turkey and Kazakhstan HPIs in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic shocks at the regional level. HPI of Kazakhstan is recognized in the global real estate transparency index but the study is rare. The study contributes to regional studies on housing price by bridging this gap in the real estate literature.