Nearly nine in 10 retirees in Turkey earn less than the country’s official hunger threshold despite a recent increase in the minimum pension, the TR724 news website reported.
The government recently set Turkey’s minimum monthly pension at 20,000 Turkish lira ($460), but that remains well below the 30,143-lira benchmark defined by labor groups.
The hunger threshold is defined as the amount of money that a family of four living in a city needs to spend for healthy and balanced nourishment, while the poverty line adds other expenses such as clothing, housing (rent and utilities), transportation, education and healthcare.
Özgür Erdursun, a pensions expert, said the latest figures show that most payments are concentrated in the lowest income brackets even after a 12.19 percent increase.
Official data show about 5.72 million people receive 20,000 lira or less a month from Turkey’s Social Security Institution (SGK), the state agency that runs the pension system. That figure includes retirees as well as survivors such as widows and orphans, who can receive smaller partial payments because the entitlement is shared among eligible family members.
Another 9.3 million people receive between 20,000 and 25,000 lira, while around 1.65 million receive more than 25,000 lira, Erdursun’s analysis showed, leaving roughly 10 percent of recipients above that level.
In total, SGK pays monthly benefits to nearly 17 million people, including old-age pensions and survivor payments. Erdursun said the large share of payments clustered near the bottom reflects a broader compression in the pension system, reducing differences between those who contributed for decades and those with shorter work histories.
Erdursun also said the gap between the minimum pension and the average pension has narrowed sharply in recent years, with the average monthly pension falling to about 23,551 ($475) lira in 2026. That has reduced the difference in income between people who contributed for decades and those with shorter work histories, he said.
Turkey’s pension debate has played out against a broader cost-of-living crisis that has strained households since a currency shock in 2018, with the lira’s weakness and high inflation eroding purchasing power for years.
Economists have largely blamed the surge in prices on President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s push for low interest rates despite inflation, a policy approach that analysts say fueled currency instability and amplified household costs. Erdoğan dismissed multiple central bank chiefs over disagreements on rate policy, an episode that raised concerns over central bank independence.
After the 2023 election, Turkey shifted toward more conventional economic policies, including sharp interest rate increases aimed at slowing inflation, though prices remain high and wage and pension adjustments have struggled to keep up with living costs.
