Notions of housing affordability concept are at the heart of debates about access to home ownership, housing finance and social policies globally. The existing housing affordability literature mostly focuses mainly on developed countries. Housing affordability problem in emerging countries are starting to attract increasing attention. This paper seeks to contribute to this emergent literature by analysing housing affordability in Turkey. The paper explores market trends, the nature of the affordability problem and makes some tentative policy suggestions. The paper develops a theoretically informed model to assess affordability using data from 2005 to 2012 on house price to income ratios, the housing affordability index of Turkey (HAIT), and a variety of social and economic indicators. The Turkish results are contrasted with similar measures for other countries.