Why was this eerie town of fairytale castles left to crumble?

Inside the ghost town of abandoned fairytale castles

The Burj Al Babas resort promised high-end European-inspired châteaux and lavish amenities for its well-to-do buyers, but what should have been a dream development soon turned into a nightmare. Twelve years on, the site is still languishing with no hope of rescue.

Let's explore Turkey's eerie abandoned town, where Disney-inspired fairytale mansions sit empty in a sea of construction debris.

All dollar values in US dollars.

Frozen in time

Despite the fairytale façades, the story of this decaying settlement doesn't have a happy ending – at least not yet.

Sequestered in the hills of northwestern Turkey, Burj Al Babas, once the next big thing in luxury housing, is now a thoroughly eerie sight. Looking at the crumbling enclave, it's hard to imagine the crowds of wealthy Middle Eastern buyers that flocked to the development in its early days.

From dream to financial disaster

Row upon row of hundreds of turreted, identikit houses meet and part in orderly lines. What was intended to be a bustling new community filled with affluent residents is now a surreal ghost town, abandoned to the whims of Mother Nature.

The downfall of Burj Al Babas is a gripping tale of grand ambitions, controversy and devastating losses, leaving its future hanging precariously in the balance.

Read on as we go back to the very beginning to uncover the origins of this unfortunate development and discover how the dream became a disaster.

French inspiration

The Sarot Group, the masterminds behind the project, splashed out on an idyllic 250-acre site just outside the historic town of Mudurnu in northwestern Turkey.

Buoyed on by a booming property market, they envisaged a whimsical and romantic spa resort with 732 villas, reportedly inspired by the Château de Chenonceau in France's Loire Valley (pictured) and Istanbul's conical Galata Tower.

Construction on the fanciful $200 million (£160m) development began around 2011.

Swish brochure

Headed by brothers Mezher and Mehmet Yerdelen, together with business partner Bulent Yilmaz, the Sarot Group wasted no time putting together a killer brochure to woo their target market: wealthy Gulf tourists.

This particular part of Turkey has long been popular with visitors from the Gulf, who are drawn to its pleasant climate, verdant scenery and tranquil spa towns.

The company opted for an Arabic name for the project – 'Burj' means 'tower' or 'turret' in the language, while 'Al Babas' refers to a renowned spa in the region.

Tourist attraction

At the centre of the development was to have been a sprawling leisure complex housed in a neoclassical building, featuring architectural nods to the US Capitol, St Peter's Basilica in Rome and London's St Paul's Cathedral.

The thermal springs that bubble beneath the development are famed for their restorative properties, and the Sarot Group planned to make the most of this remarkable resource.

They intended to deck out the central complex with a number of jaw-dropping features, including an aqua park complete with water slides and streams, indoor pools, Turkish baths, saunas and steam rooms. A sustainable resource, the waters would have been used to heat the complex too.

Luxe interiors

No expense was to have been spared on the interiors of Burj Al Babas, which, judging by this render of an indoor covered pool under one of the building's domes, would have been dripping in expensive marble.

As well as housing the spa facilities, the hub of the resort was slated to feature a whole host of other lavish amenities. These included boutiques, restaurants, cinemas, children's play areas, conference halls and meeting rooms, not to mention fitness and beauty centres, tennis and basketball courts and covered football pitches.

Fairytale estate

Meanwhile, each of the proposed 732 residences was designed in the same whimsical architectural style, as though straight out of a storybook.

Consultant Architect Naci Yoruk has revealed that it was the clients who insisted on the distinctive château design. Needless to say, he went all-out, throwing in Disneyesque turrets, mansard roofs, dormers, balconies with stone balustrades and copious decoration.

Sumptuous rooms

The fairytale homes were initially designed to be equally if not more impressive on the inside. Rooms were to boast high ceilings, ornate plasterwork, parquet flooring and other fine finishes, including a sweeping spiral staircase leading to the upper floor and a stunning rooftop terrace.

High-end touches

A Jacuzzi where homeowners could bathe in healing spa waters was to have been installed on each floor, and buyers were given the option of an indoor pool and lift.

With construction off the ground, the Sarot Group opened an office in Kuwait and set about marketing their utopian vision, with the villas priced between a relatively affordable $370,000 (£295k) and $500,000 (£399k).

Local opposition

Meanwhile, local opposition to the controversial project was mounting. While the mayor of Mudurnu at that time, Mehmet İnegöl, is said to have been 100% behind the development, other members of the community reportedly criticised it, arguing that the mini châteaux were completely out of place and would end up blighting the landscape.

A potential UNESCO World Heritage Site, Mudurnu dates back to Roman times and is celebrated for its distinctive Byzantine and Ottoman architecture.

Tougher rules

The Turkish government has since introduced regulations designed to preserve the historical integrity of the nation's cities, towns and villages, and prevent similar projects from making it off the drawing board.

However, the rules came in after work had begun on Burj Al Babas, and construction continued unabated, with a peak workforce of 8,000 toiling away on the development.

Environmental damage

The then-mayor attempted to assuage locals' concerns, assuring them that the development would be hidden away in a valley outside the town.

But the alleged destruction of 82 black pine and oak trees and the dumping of excavated soil on 6.5 acres of pristine woodland further infuriated Mudurnu residents, who were already up in arms about the resort's incongruous architecture.

Court case

An official criminal complaint was made against Burj Al Babas in 2015. The indictment was issued the following year and a lawsuit accusing the Sarot Group of environmental damage was filed in 2018.

The case is, by all accounts, still thought to be pending, but this wasn't the sole problem the developers were dealing with...

High hopes

During the early stages of the development, the fairytale castles were selling like hotcakes and all was boding well for the project from a financial point of view.

Deep-pocketed buyers from Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia were lining up to invest in the development and secure their very own French-style castle. But the storm clouds were brewing...

Strong headwinds

The Turkish economy was tanking and plummeting oil prices were hitting the developer's target market hard in the wallet. Sales began to dry up, but building work pressed on.

By summer 2018, 587 mini châteaux had been constructed, albeit in differing states of completion, though only around 350 had been sold.

Defaulting buyers

Compounding the developer's money woes, a large proportion of buyers were reportedly struggling to pay the cost of the villas. The project was up to its eyeballs in debt and the Sarot Group was staring into a gaping financial black hole.

With the company's debt burden climbing to $27 million, it needed to offload the remaining mini castles, and fast. Show villas, looking rather more basic than the brochure renders promised, were fitted out, but business remained far from brisk.

Cut-price payment plans

A post on the Sarot Group's Instagram page from April 2018 shows a change in tack in their efforts to offload the empty homes.

A translation of the post shows that the company was marketing a number of its villas with a flexible payment plan. This meant that buyers would pay "a monthly installment of $5,000... and no down payment". The installments would be payable for five years.

The Sarot Group also claimed in the post that the project was in the "finishing stages" and that the villas were "90% completed". However, it doesn't seem that this drastic sales technique was enough to rescue the development...

Debt problems

In June 2018, the Sarot Group applied for a concordat, which is an agreement that lets 'well-intentioned and honest' debtors pay back part of what they owe to appease creditors and stave off bankruptcy.

The court reportedly gave the firm three months to sort out its debts in accordance with the terms of the agreement, but the Sarot Group was unable to cough up the necessary cash and the deadline passed.

Bankruptcy order

As with many abandoned mansions found across the world, costs began spiralling out of control.

The Sarot Group asked for permission to restructure the outstanding debts, but the court refused and in November 2018 it imposed a bankruptcy order instead. Construction ground to a halt despite pleas for it to carry on.

Getting over the crisis

At the time, the Sarot Group said that the company only needed to sell an additional 100 villas to pay off its debts.

“The project is valued at $200 million,” the Sarot Group Chairman Mehmet Emin Yerdelen commented in November 2018. “We only need to sell 100 villas to pay off our debt. I believe we can get over this crisis in 4-5 months and partially inaugurate the project in 2019.”

Abandoned ghost town

Yet sadly for the group, nothing much happened in the years that followed Yerdelen's positive comments.

Burj Al Babas has pretty much become an abandoned ghost town. Although the court did eventually allow the Sarot Group to continue marketing the completed mini châteaux after the firm's lawyers lodged an appeal, the project has effectively been put on indefinite hold.

Golden passports

In 2018, in a bid to entice overseas property investors to boost the flagging market, the Turkish government acted to reduce the minimum property investment required for a foreign national to secure citizenship from $1 million (£767k) to just $250,000 (£199k), but Burj Al Babas still found itself floundering.

Tight fit

It's conceivable that some buyers may have been put off by the lack of privacy the villas provide. While each has a small garden, the mini châteaux stand almost shoulder to shoulder, with little space separating one from the other.

“They ask for walls,” Mehmet Yerdelen told the New York Times, “but I say no, there will be trees instead.”

Positive voice

The New York Times also spoke to Imad Yousef, a real estate broker in Kuwait, who has decided to look on the bright side and remain positive about the development.

“I hope to make some money, and I will use it myself,” he said. “When the project is finished, God willing, it will be amazing.”

Expectant investors

Other buyers, as you can imagine, aren't quite so optimistic. “In 2013, I purchased a timeshare studio for 13,000 Turkish Liras. I fully paid the cost. My timeshare was supposed to be delivered in 2015,” investor Nilüfer Önce told Hürriyet Daily News. Another called for his money to be refunded.

Construction resumes

A breakthrough came in November 2019. By this point, the Sarot Group had discharged 50% of its debts, persuading the court to reverse the bankruptcy decision.

Permission was granted for the construction of the remaining villas to resume, much to the delight of the developer and the project's investors.

Further delays

Construction was stalled again over the winter due to inclement weather conditions and then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, which likely added a further very significant delay due to lockdown and other disease-mitigating measures.

Still, Burj Al Babas hasn't been short of visitors over the past few years, and the abandoned dream homes have fast turned into a cult attraction.

Arty endeavours

In February 2020, conceptual designer and director Alexandre Humbert shot a short film at Burj Al Babas, reimagining the place as a theme park called Sleeping Beauties, where visitors stump up a small entrance fee to photograph the empty villas.

Meanwhile, in the autumn of the same year, the music video for Meduza's smash hit 'Lose Control', which has an edgy, post-apocalyptic feel, was filmed in and around the modern ghost town.

Urbex hotspot

The site has also attracted its fair share of urbex enthusiasts. In December 2020, intrepid vlogger and BBC's The Travel Show host Mike Corey paid Burj Al Babas a visit with a couple of buddies in tow, and posted a video of the experience on his Fearless & Far YouTube channel, racking up more than 2.4 million views for his efforts.

However, by the looks of the most recent images to emerge of the development, little has changed in the past year or so for this dilapidated outpost...

Burj Al Babas completion date

This image shows the villas shrouded in snow in February 2022. While their architecture is still grand and stately, many are open to the elements, the winter frost no doubt wreaking havoc on the structures. A power line appears to run through the site, but it looks less than stable, and discarded construction materials litter the frozen ground.

If, or when, this deserted development will be completed is anyone's guess. The Sarot Group's CEO Mezher Yerdelen vowed to have the project done and dusted in 2021, a pledge made before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Two years on, that ambitious deadline was clearly never met.

Construction stalled

Judging by this Google Earth image, which captures Burj Al Babas as it was on 27 September 2023, the site is in much the same state of abandonment as it has been for the past few years.

It's quite something though to see the sheer scale of the project from the sky – all those orderly lines of villas lying dormant, waiting for residents who may never arrive.

Uncertain future

Given the absence of activity at the building site, the latest images of the development and the project's dormant social media accounts – their last interaction on Facebook was back in January 2022 – it seems the project has been left to languish for the time being.

Who knows if this ill-fated town will ever see its grand plan realised. Hopefully one day, Burj Al Babas will get the fairytale rescue it so badly needs.

The Sarot Group did not respond to requests for comment for this story.