Since the second RE360 Real Estate Gathering witnessed a great deal of participation at the national and international levels, the Turkish real estate world has rolled up its sleeves to finally welcome the Turkey edition of the world's largest real estate exhibition, MIPIM, for which much effort has been made over the last two years.

The two-day RE360 event, held for the second time, kicked off on Tuesday and brought together the movers and shakers of the Turkish real estate sector, relevant parties and stakeholders from investors to service providers.

Supported by the Environment and Urban Planning Ministry, more than 700 local and foreign high-level executives attended the event. The meeting, prepared by gathering the opinions of sector stakeholders, addressed the sector's agenda issues such as innovation, diversity, a sustainable future and common benefits.

The participation of MIPIM as a strategic partner is the event's most important development and is seen as the start of preparations for MIPIM's Turkey edition, for which the country has showed maximum effort in recent years.

MIPIM has so far seen a number of Turkish cities and hundreds of real estate developers presenting their ambitions concerning the reconfiguration of global urbanization and showcasing their projects. Last, some 250 Turkish companies attended the international real estate exhibition in Cannes, France, in March this year. Meanwhile, addressing the event, Environment and Urban Planning Deputy Minister Fatma Varank said Turkey expects to earn around $12 billion from real estate sales to foreigners in 2019.

Varank noted that there are around 19.5 million houses in Turkey, adding that compared to population growth, house need in the country is on the rise each day.

"While 900,000 units of housing are built in Turkey annually, 700,000 are sold. This situation points to the importance of the sector in our economy. The size of the sector in our country is much higher than that of the developed countries since 2012," she added.

Referring to MIPIM, Varank said, "We are a MIPIM candidate for 2019; 2020 is late for us. As the Environment and Urbanization Ministry, we will do whatever it takes for this."

On the other hand, Alkaş Chairman Avi Alkaş, the host of the event, said they believe the RE360 meeting will be very beneficial for the sector.
"We will ensure that the Turkish real estate sector is better prepared for the coming period, and we are determined to open it to the international arena," Alkaş noted.

On the other hand, Alkaş General Manager Yonca Aközer said they have been accompanying the world's largest real estate exhibition MIPIM for years together with sector representatives.

"The biggest difference of this year's RE360 gathering is that MIPIM, the biggest real estate fair in the world, is our strategic partner. This indicates that we will carry this work to the next year and to the international platform," she said.

"We have been negotiating with our French partner Reed MIDEM for MIPIM Turkey. We have planned the RE360 Gathering as a kind of preliminary preparation of the sector ahead of MIPIM Turkey," Aközer noted, adding that they have hosted attendees from Russia, Kazakhstan, the U.K., the Middle East and Italy during the two-day event.

Reed Exhibitions Europe Chairman Kumsal Beyazit indicated that RE360 is a good platform for the Turkish real estate sector to come together with international players to create future cooperation.