Turkey’s finance minister, Mehmet Şimşek, has criticized a law passed last year to make millions of people failing to meet the age requirement for retirement eligible for it, arguing that the law has crippled the budget, according to a report by Deutsche Welle (DW) Turkish service on Wednesday.
A law passed in 1999 raised the age of retirement in Turkey to 58 for females and 60 for males, effectively ending earlier schemes that had provided many the opportunity to retire early.
The so-called Law on Early Retirement Despite Failing to Meet the Age Requirement (EYT) was published in the Official Gazette on March 3, 2023, entering into force on the date of its publication. The law rearranged the conditions for individuals deemed registered with Turkey’s Social Security Institution (SGK) before September 9, 1999, removing the age requirement and making them eligible for retirement.
Many claimed that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had passed the law only two months before the presidential and parliamentary elections held in Turkey last May in order to strengthen his hand in the elections.
Şimşek said the law has crippled the budget while talking about public expenditures in a presentation he made at a camp he attended with mayors from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) earlier this week, according to DW.
The minister said the SGK system has had a deficit of nearly TL 1.5 trillion due to the financial burden of the millions of new pensioners.
Noting that there are currently 16.1 million retirees in Turkey and that the law allowed millions of people to retire as early as the age of 38, Şimşek said that this system is “unsustainable.”
According to the minister 2.3 million people benefited from the law in the first stage, and the number is expected to reach 6 million by the end of this year. Şimşek also said the law’s burden on the budget, which is TL 742 billion ($22.7 billion) for 2024, will be TL 1.2 trillion ($36.8 billion) in 2025.
During a joint program broadcast live on Bloomberg HT-Habertürk Monday morning, the minister also said the law was passed before the elections last year with a “populist push by the opposition.”