Comparative building amnesty and land use policies: Insights from ten countries with a focus on Turkey

This study critically examines Turkey’s building amnesty policies from an international perspective, assessing their impacts on environmental sustainability, urban planning, and governance. Using comparative analysis and case study method, the research evaluates building amnesty frameworks across ten countries, including Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, South Africa, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Greece, and Kenya. These countries represent diverse legal, social, and environmental contexts, offering a broad comparative foundation. While Germany emphasizes sustainability-driven urban governance and strict regulatory oversight, Brazil and South Africa focus on tenure security and the integration of informal settlements through socially inclusive policies. Spain and Italy incorporate heritage conservation and adaptive reuse into their amnesty programs, whereas India and Indonesia face challenges in balancing rapid urbanization with institutional enforcement. Mexico, Kenya, and Greece illustrate hybrid models shaped by fiscal constraints and administrative fragmentation. The findings indicate that, although Turkey’s amnesty policies have provided short-term economic benefits such as increased tax revenues and the formalization of informal housing, they have also contributed to unregulated urban expansion, environmental degradation, and infrastructure strain due to weak regulatory oversight. Turkey’s current amnesty framework remains reactive, legalizing informal structures without ensuring long-term resilience or sustainable development. In contrast, several international models demonstrate a more proactive integration of amnesty policies into strategic urban planning. The novelty of this study lies in its cross-national synthesis combined with a detailed case study, offering an interdisciplinary framework that links legal structures, environmental outcomes, and governance dynamics in the context of building amnesties. To enhance sustainability, Turkey should integrate best practices from international models, including stricter regulatory enforcement, environmental impact assessments, and urban planning integration. This research contributes to evidence-based zoning policies by identifying strategies that align building amnesty programs with sustainable urban development and by proposing actionable frameworks that balance global best practices with Turkey’s unique legal and governance context.