ANKARA, Turkey (Turkish Daily News), April 7, 2008:
ÖZGÜÇ KOZAN
ISTANUL - Referans
With Turkey's elderly population gradually beginning to increase, investments in luxury rest homes are becoming a profitable venture and have also attracted the attention of foreign investors.
A semi-feudal lord, or ağa, from the southeastern Anatolian region of Turkey enters, by chance, a rest home for the elderly while escaping from a hospital in Istanbul. Finding himself amid some elderly people left alone by their families, the old ağa, later goes on a journey to his hometown together with the elderly people he met at the rest home.
His aim is to show the genuine appreciation and love for the elderly to those people left to their destiny. The movie “Beyaz Melek” (White Angel), which tells the story of elderly people living in rest homes, did not bring a plethora of awards for its director Mahsun Kırmızıgül but with the box office record it broke it caused many to grasp the sensitivity of its theme.
Private rest homes provide a wide range of services from swimming pools with sauna to fitness centers, cinema halls, and even barbecue fun on weekends to the elderly.
Increasing in number daily, the number of private rest homes seems to erase the bad rest home scenes that mostly become the subject of movies and news programs. In fact, the last five years have witnessed an eight-fold increase in the number of private rest homes, which, with their saunas, cinema halls and physical therapy clinics, almost resemble five-star hotels. Competing to present the best familial comfort and warmth, these private rest homes for the elderly have also attracted the attention of foreign investors.
While investors from Australia and Germany are currently focusing on Turkey, the De Wever Foundation, providing care for about 2,000 elderly people in a total of 17 rest homes in the Netherlands has been in contact for some time with Istanbul's Darülaceze (Almshouse) Foundation to take over the management of a 300-bed rest home in Yakacık district that it established through a YTL 8 million investment.
Private rest homes shelter 5,000 old people
According to figures by Turkey's Social Services and Child Protection Agency (SHÇEK), the number of private rest homes for the elderly has reached 109 since 2002. Five years ago there were only 12. In addition to private ones, there are a total of 69 rest homes that are dependent on SHÇEK, six that belong to different ministries, 19 that belong to municipalities and seven that belong to non-Muslim communities in Turkey.
In the 69 rest homes belonging to SHÇEK, a total of 6,412 elderly people are being cared for as of September 2007. According to estimates, the number of elderly people residing in privately owned rest homes has exceeded 5,000.
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