Pension in Turkey: Erdogan abolishes minimum age for entry
Created: 12/29/2022, 3:42 p.m
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday that the minimum retirement age in Turkey will be lifted.
© Christoph Soeder/dpa
President Erdogan has announced that Turkey will abolish the minimum retirement age.
Millions of people can benefit from this - possibly even himself.
Ankara – While voices are getting louder in Germany to raise the retirement age, the opposite is happening in Turkey: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday that the minimum retirement age in Turkey would be abolished.
Erdogan abolishes minimum retirement age
This means that more than two million Turks will now have the opportunity to retire immediately, reports the
Reuters
news agency .
So far, the minimum retirement age in the country was 60 for men and 58 for women.
A minimum number of days worked still applies as a condition for entering retirement.
It is difficult to say whether those affected will be able to make use of the new opportunity or whether they will have to continue working to secure their income: Turkey is suffering from rampant inflation and extremely high energy and food prices.
People on low incomes or pensioners feel the effects clearly - they can now afford much less.
Consumer prices rose by 84.4 percent in November, according to the Statistics Office of Turkey.
In the previous month, inflation had marked the highest level in 24 years at 85.5 percent.
However, according to a group of independent economists, the actual rate of inflation in the country is more than twice as high.
In addition, the Turkish currency lost almost 30 percent of its value in the past year.
Economists blame Erdogan for rampant inflation
In contrast to many other central banks, the Turkish central bank is not fighting inflation by raising interest rates at Erdogan's behest.
In fact, it has recently lowered its key interest rate several times.
Economists therefore hold Erdogan's financial policy largely responsible for the high inflation.
The President is sticking to his line – but has announced other reforms.
In addition to abolishing the minimum retirement age, he also wants to raise the minimum wage – for the third time in a year.
He will certainly also keep an eye on the coming elections in June and want to secure more votes with the announcements.
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Meanwhile, the opposition is already raising hopes: the people have had enough of Erdogan.
"They say enough is enough.
You got tired, back off.
A new era will begin," said the head of the largest opposition party, CHP, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the German Press Agency.
With material from dpa and AFP