President Erdoğan announced the highly anticipated minimum wage.
In a statement at the Dolmabahçe Presidency Labor Office, President Erdoğan said that the minimum wage increased by 30% to 5500 TL.
Stating that inflation is a problem not only in Turkey but also in the developed countries of the world, Erdoğan emphasized that they do not allow employment to decline by supporting production.
Stating that the inflation caused the minimum wage hike at the beginning of the year to be insufficient, the President stated that the minimum wage was re-determined for this reason.
President Erdogan’s full statement is as follows:
“Turkey has been implementing its own program against the economic traps it has been exposed to for a while. First, we came face to face with the global economic reasons disrupted by the epidemic and then by the war. We experienced the most negative results as the rise in exchange rates and inflation. Inflation is the problem of the whole world. Inflation figures are different in our country. While closely following every development in the world, we gave our priority to the solution of our own citizens. Our priority in the economic program we have been implementing for 4 years has been to protect the hopes of our people. We do this according to the economic program based on growth. In the period when global production and supply chains collapsed, Turkey came to the fore as a country that meets its own needs. We have succeeded in dividing our country in a positive way these days. We have taken and continue to take measures to compensate for the loss of welfare for each of our people. We did not allow employment to decline. Our goal is to support employees in the face of the cost of living without suppressing them only by inflation.
We made significant increases in the New Year. We made a historic increase in the salaries of our retirees. We, as the state, made sacrifices on the minimum wage and gave up the parts of all salaries equal to the minimum wage. We found that these increases were insufficient after a while. We asked our friends to make the necessary preparations. Salaries of public employees and retirees will be increased by more than 40 percent. We have seen that the losses of minimum wages should be compensated. The commission was called to meeting. We set a new minimum wage figure. We are making an interim increase of 30 percent to the minimum wage, effective from July. The minimum wage will be 5500 TL net. Our state will provide 100 lira support to employers per worker.”
