Bodrum is the place to be for Middle Eastern Royalty in hot summer seasons.
Turkey’s famous holiday resort Bodrum is one of the hottest spots for world wide celebrities and Royal Families…
According to officials in the last 10 years so many celebrities and royal families visited Bodrum with their million dollar yachts.
Among them are Saudi Arabian Prince Mohammad bin Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah and Prince Hassan of Jordan, all of whom have bought villas and land in Bodrum.
Platinum Magazine, an Arabic-language, prestigious lifestyle publication owned by a member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Maha al-Shaikh, dedicated four pages to Bodrum in one of its recent issues. The article praised Bodrum’s and Yalıkavak’s natural beauty, adding that many international celebrities had made huge investments in Bodrum for holiday purposes.
Mayor of Yalıkavak, Mustafa Saruhan, said the total investments made by Middle Eastern princes, kings and sheiks in the past 10 years are over 500 million euros.
Top executives from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain and Qatar, who have bought land in Bodrum, are also spending their summer holidays with their families in luxury yachts berthed at Bodrum marinas, he said. The mayor also highlighted an article printed in Platinum Magazine titled, “The city of celebrities and yacht fans,†praising Bodrum and its drawing points.
İbrahim Çeçen of Çeçen Real Estate Investment said scores of top executives, especially from Saudi Arabia, and then from Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon and Egypt had bought land in Yalıkavak, a district of Bodrum, and had built luxury villas worth up to 20 million euros.
Most recently, Libyan President Moammar Gadhafi’s sons Motossim Bilal and Hannibal Gadhafi spent their vacation in Bodrum last summer and were looking for land to build a hotel, Çeçen said. “Land prices in the region have skyrocketed. The reason for this is that celebrities prefer Bodrum and Yalıkavak both for holidays and investments.â€
Famous Villa owners in Bodrum
Saudi Arabian Prince Mohammad bin Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud; Princess Abeer al-Saud, from the family of Saudi Arabia Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Sultan; Saudi Arabian Security Council head Prince Bandar Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud; Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah; his brother, Prince Nasser Sabah al-Ahmet al-Jaber al-Sabah; Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheik Muhammed Sabah al-Salim; Prince Al-Hasan; and Ali bin Nayef of Jordan all own villas and land in Yalıkavak.
From the Ottoman dynasty, Sultan Murad’s fifth grandchild, Osman Selaheddin Osmanoğlu, also owns a villa in Yalıkavak. The ownership of these villas and title deeds belong to either architects, embassy personnel, honorary consulates or relatives who live in Turkey.