Erdogan's grand palace: costly folly or symbol of new Turkey?

For critics, it is the latest excess of an authoritarian ruler, a folly comparable to the notorious Palace of the People of deposed Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Even the Turkish deputy prime minister admits the costs ran a little high.

But for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan his new palace on the outskirts of Ankara -- costing no less than $615 million (500 million euros) -- is a "work of art" and an essential symbol of a "new Turkey", with its growing economy and diplomatic might.

Known officially as the Presidential Palace but dubbed universally as the Aksaray (White Palace), the complex takes up an area of 200,000 square metres (2.1 million square feet), has 1,000 rooms and draws its architectural inspiration from Turkey's Ottoman and Seljuk heritage.

Still not entirely finished, the palace has already started hosting official events and talks. Pope Francis is set to the first house guest during a visit to Turkey at the end of the month.

Controversy over the palace soared when Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek told a parliamentary budget committee this week that the total cost so far was 1.37 billion Turkish lira ($615 million), around double the original price tag.

Even one of Erdogan’s oldest allies, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, admitted to a parliamentary committee this week that "this was not a small sum of money."

"The figures are high and if you think we should not have spent this amount then it's something that can be debated," he said.

'Modelled on Ceausescu'

For the opposition, the palace is more evidence of the willingness of Erdogan and the Islamic-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to ride roughshod over the legacy of modern Turkey's secular founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Ataturk set aside the land on which the new palace was built as a farm and himself worked -- like all Turkish presidents until now -- in the far more modest Cankaya presidential palace in downtown Ankara.

"The new palace is modelled on the palace that Ceausescu built for himself in Bucharest but did not live in for a day," scoffed Izzet Cetin of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), quoted by the Hurriyet daily.

The Romanian tyrant’s gigantic Casa Poporului (Palace of the People) was still unfinished when he and his wife were shot dead by firing squad in the revolution of 1989.

Yusuf Halacoglu of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) said: "Think of the workers who are earning 850 lira ($375) a mo