Turkey plans to pave more of its coastline

was a child the Cesme peninsula was a beautiful backwater. It was in the 1990s that developers began throwing up the hotels that have since made this spot on Turkey’s Aegean coast famous among middle-class tourists. Now Turkey’s government has set aside another sixth of the peninsula for the sorts of projects that developers hope will draw in the very rich. Golf courses, marinas, hotels and residences could replace more than 5,000 hectares of forest. Wetlands hosting more than a hundred types of bird are also to be filled in. “Everything is about making money,” sighs Mr Onal, a local historian.Similar transformations are under way all along Turkey’s coastline. Since the 1980s countless fishing villages have given way to sprawling, mostly low-cost resorts. These days tourism—and giant construction projects—are vital to the economy. And the growing trend is towards building posh resorts that attract ultra-rich visitors from the Arab Gulf and (this year) Russia. Several oligarchs are said to have moved their superyachts to Turkey’s marinas after European countries imposed sanctions on their assets and began seizing boats.