Florida and Antalya sit on opposite sides of the world. But when you look beyond the map and focus on the people who live there, you can see the dreams (and dramas) of residents who were supposed to enjoy a relaxed, outdoor-focused life. Yet, where wealth gathers, disputes often follow.
The $6 Billion Antalya Inheritance Dispute and the Case of Arap Süleyman
One of the most legally complex and long-lasting inheritance disputes in modern Turkish history is unfolding in the middle of Antalya, the country’s foremost tourist destination. The story reaches back to the Ottoman era, when a man named Arap Süleyman, also known as Hacı Süleyman, and his contemporary Hacıbekirzade Hacı Mehmet Ağa held roughly 4,000 decares of land that would later become the most valuable real estate in the city.
That land eventually came to cover the neighbourhoods of Meltem and Bahçelievler, home to around 10,000 properties, the famous Konyaaltı Beach Park, the Antalya Courthouse, numerous five-star hotels, sports facilities, and many of the public buildings that define the modern city. Its estimated value today exceeds 6 billion dollars.
For most of the twentieth century, ownership appeared settled between the Hacıbekirzade family, the State Treasury, and Arap Süleyman’ heirs. Each held a one-third share. But in 1992, when a court issued a final decision on who Arap Süleyman”s rightful heirs were, another protracted legal sagas in Turkey has started.
The dispute escalted around 2006, when a court ruling on the inheritance line became final. Within a few years, however, investigators claimed that the records had been altered.
In 2011, investigators alleged that some of the individuals asserting heirship through a lineage known as the “Havva branch” may not have been genuine descendants. Separately, those investigators claimed, official records had lost track of another branch they considered legitimate, who were the descendants of Arap Süleyman’s daughter Ayşe.
Expert witnesses, having examined Ottoman-era Sharia court records and all inheritance certificates issued to date, identified Arap Süleyman’s heirs as his daughter Ayşe from his first wife, and his sons Mehmet Ali, Osman, and Hacı Necip, and daughters Zeliha and Havva from his second wife. Their report also set out the lineage of these six individuals and determined that the total number of heirs exceeds 700.
According to investigators, a senior official at the State Archives Bureau named Hüsnü Yiğit was alleged to have been behind the falsification. Investigators claimed that Yiğit used his position and access to Ottoman-era documents written in Ottoman Turkish to manipulate genealogical records and added himself and associates as heirs while erasing those claimed to be legitimate descendants. Yiğit’s response to these allegations is not recorded in the available account.
The same expert witnesses concluded that, based on the records they examined, Yiğit had no valid claim to the Arap Süleyman estate.
Until the Antalya courts reach a conclusion, the Glass Pyramid stays closed and the land around it is too contested to develop all the while too valuable to ignore.
The $4 Billion Inheritance Dispute – Case of the Tatlicis
Meanwhile in Florida, sixteen years of Tatlici inheritance litigation reached a verdict though not necessarily a resolution.
The fight began after Turkish billionaire Mehmet Salih Tatlici died in 2009. His estate was reported to be worth more than 4 billion dollars. His biological son Mehmet Tatlici sued his stepmother Nurten Tatlici and half-brother Ugur Tatlici in Florida, alleging that the defendants had transferred assets in breach of Turkish inheritance law.
In August 2025, the case went to trial. A Florida jury awarded $535 million to the estate.
That decision is now being challenged by the defendants, who argue the trial was too flawed and the process that produced the 535 million dollar award was, in their telling, broken from the start.
Private Wealth Becomes a Public’s Problem
The Antalya and Florida disputes are two examples of why genuinely institutional businesses remain so rare in Turkey.
In Karaköy, for instance, a major brand like Güllüoğlu declares that it does not franchise, while relatives operate separate baklava shops under the same or a similar family name.
A comparable dynamic appears to be playing out with the Selvili family. In that well-known İzmir family, a woman named Esen Gül Berker has filed a lawsuit claiming to be an heir to assets reportedly worth approximately 2.5 billion lira. The case was on the headlines for both the scale of the alleged estate and the ferocity of the dispute due to requests to exhume graves and conduct DNA testing to establish her claimed heirship.
Rather than building durable, rules-based institutions designed to outlive individual family members, wealth and reputation are repeatedly fragmented by personal rivalries, opaque arrangements, and litigation that shows no sign of ending.
What is harder to measure is the wider effect. Courts occupied for years by disputes over private fortunes, public resources directed toward litigation that benefits a handful of claimants, and a residual sense, among those watching from the outside, that the scales do not balance.