According to Vice, “Ak Saray became the largest presidential residence

in the world, surpassing the roost belonging to the sultan of Brunei,

which had held the title since 1984.”

Author Pinar TremblayPosted April 2, 2015

The AKP’s grip on the media is well documented in Turkey and is used not only to
prevent embarrassing news from spreading, but also to generate a false positive
image in the public opinion of the president and his family.

In an attempt to showcase Emine Erdogan as a frugal, simple and environmentally

friendly first lady, pro-AKP Yeni Safak Daily published a profile of how she manages
the palace's kitchen. Some intriguing details were revealed. In an effort to minimize
waste, the Erdogan family recycles lemon and apple peels into vinegar. They also
use their olive and date pits to make sauces. (Al-Monitor could not verify what kind of
sauce can be made from these pits.) It appears that Emine is conscious about
organic farming and investigates in detail all the origins of the products that enter the
palace.
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 kilo… and
drinks it from gold leaf glasses worth £250 each. 

Erdogan's authoritarian approach is not confined to Turkey's borders. His

bodyguards harassed reporters in the US, and a German satirist is under
investigation in his home country for offending the Turkish president on TV .
He gifts a Mercedes S500 sedan to the cleric he favors — Mehmet Görmez, the head
of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) — purchased with state funds of
course.
His children allegedly "swim in luxury" — a luxury they can hardly justify with their
father’s 50,000 euro ($55,025) annual salary as head of state.
They live in luxurious villas and have their own not-so-transparent businesses
(cosmetics, instant foods, shipping industry and jewelry).
 One of Erdogan’s sons, Ahmet, is worth some $80 million. His younger son, Bilal,
often appears in media headlines “in connection with shady and criminal deals.” He
was recently tried in Italy over claims that his estate may be connected to a massive
political corruption scandal involving Turkey’s ruling AKP party.
His wife, Emine, in the meanwhile, drinks special white tea that costs more than
$1,900 a kilo in gold leaf glasses worth $300 each. 
She once allegedly had an entire Brussels shopping mall closed down in order to
indulge in a designer shopping spree.

She claims to live a 'humble and modest' life with strict Muslim values, whiling away the hours in
palace kitchen fermenting apples and turning them into vinegar.
But while her tyrant 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 Erdogan's jet-set lifestyle is a whirlwind of one shopping trip after another where her

Updated 9April 2013

\We also learned that she had recommended dry mango slices to the first lady
of Mali, Keita Aminata Maiga. According to the Yeni Safak article, Maiga was
reportedly complaining about not being able to export mangos because of a
short shelf life. Emine then recommended to dry mango slices to assist in
Mali’s exports. But nothing got the attention of the Turkish public more than
the white tea discussed in the article. The first lady of Turkey recommended
that we all reconnect with Mother Nature and consume only the most natural
products, and confessed that the most frequently consumed tea at the palace
is white tea from the Rize region on the eastern Black Sea coast of Turkey.

So what is the big deal? White tea is sold in well-stocked supermarkets all
over the world, along with black and green tea, at $3-$4 for a pack of 20 tea
bags. But that is not the white tea consumed at the presidential palace in
Turkey. Indeed, even most residents in Rize are not aware of this white tea,
which sells for about $1,800-$2,000 per kilo (2.2 pounds). Considering
the increasing poverty and the fact that 22 million out of 77 million people in
Turkey live on an average monthly income of $320, this most unrefined and
luxurious white tea is not available at your regular supermarket. The majority
of Turks, who are mostly black tea drinkers, have not even heard of white tea.
The white tea consumed at the palace caused an uproar in social media, where
people ridiculed the allegedly modest palace life of the Erdogan family.

In a rare instance, pro-AKP pundits mostly remained silent, likely because

there was nothing to say that would justify the lavish lifestyle and extravagant
expenses of the Erdogan family. On March 27, discretionary funding for the
president was approved by the parliament, which alleviated public concerns
about the palace extravaganza.

Below are examples of how the white tea became the latest joke on social media of
the opposition movement:

 I am a man worthy of the Palaces! In one hand, I have white tea, in the other
Mango. Who cares about the troubles of the world?
 In glasses that cost $1,000 each, of course they would not be drinking 50-
cent tea, so they have to have the $2,000 tea.
 If they cannot find bread let them drink white tea.
 A modest life is drinking white tea that weighs in at 20 grams [0.7 ounces] for
80 Turkish lira [$40]. May God bestow a modest life on us all!
 Only one serving of food, recycling apple peels, wine glasses with gold glaze,
5,000 lira for a kilo of white tea, 10,000 lira for toilet seats. An ordinary day at the
White Palace!

Updated 9April 2013

 The other day I was thinking, for me to buy 1 kilo of white tea I must sell
10,000 simits. What an unjust world!
 Rejoice poor people! After 2 days of hard work, I was able to
produce smuggled white tea for you all. [Photos show diluted black tea.]
 Do you think the vinegar Emine makes turned into wine?

But the most striking tweets were written by a former AKP parliamentarian, Suat
Kiniklioglu:

 In public opinion polls, [lavish spending at] the White Palace is seen as
detrimental to the AKP’s image. That is the reason behind the lemon peels of
“Simple Life” interviews. Perception Management Forever!
 It seems they failed to take into account the price of white tea. Mission not
accomplished. So I expect a new interview next week, where Mrs. Erdogan
is photographed making tarhana [a traditional Turkish soup mixture].

Updated 9April 2013