Law 775 classified squatter districts into clearance, improvement and prevention zones, created a gecekondu fund, provided for prevention areas with serviced plots, and gave authorities demolition powers against new building. Demolition capacity never came close to matching migration, and the 1976 amendment tilted the law towards upgrading what already existed. The amnesty laws of 1983 and 1984 then legalised gecekondus built before mid-1981, granting title deeds and, through improvement zoning plans, development rights that typically converted a single-storey squatter house into an entitlement for a multi-storey apartment block.
Turkey chose regularisation and redevelopment over eviction, so a large share of Ankara's and Istanbul's population lived in housing that was illegal when built and legal afterwards. The improvement plans turned squatter land into the raw material of the Turkish apartment boom and later of TOİKİ-led urban renewal, making periodic amnesty a structural feature of Turkish urban politics.
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