The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is under fire after a key parliamentary committee approved a plan for a large pay raise for a small group of senior civil servants, while leaving millions of lower-ranking employees out.
The proposal would give a flat monthly increase of up to 30,000 Turkish lira ($706) to top managers and so-called “career experts” in central government bodies.
The raise was passed by parliament’s Planning and Budget Committee and now goes to the General Assembly for a final vote. The government had set the 2025 net minimum wage at 22,104 lira, meaning the new monthly increase alone would be higher than the full monthly paycheck of a minimum wage worker.
According to Turkish media reports, the package covers positions such as general directors, heads of government agencies, department heads, provincial directors, inspectors and specialist staff in central ministries and key regulatory bodies. The government says around 30,000 people will benefit, a small share of Turkey’s roughly 4 million civil servants.
The plan does not cover teachers, police officers, nurses or doctors as well as many engineers and clerical workers in the wider civil service, who have also seen their pay eroded by high inflation. It also leaves out many managers and specialists who work in local and provincial branches of central institutions, which unions say deepens the divide between Ankara and the rest of the country.
Ruling party lawmakers argue that the raise is needed to stop an exodus of highly trained staff from public agencies to the private sector. Officials say regulators and auditors who oversee banks, capital markets and other sensitive areas have seen their real wages shrink and are hard to retain.
Unions and opposition parties say the move amounts to special treatment for the bureaucracy close to power. They accuse the government of asking most of society to accept “austerity” while quietly rescuing the income of a much smaller elite group.
Memur-Sen, the country’s largest public sector union confederation, said the flat raise should cover all public workers, not only senior staff. In a statement it urged parliament to fold an earlier 18,682 lira temporary top into net salaries and to extend any new flat raise to the roughly 2.5 million public sector retirees as well.
The left-leaning Confederation of Public Sector Trade Unions (KESK) called the proposal a “favor for a lucky minority.” It said 4 million civil servants and 2.5 million retirees were being “punished in plain sight” as their wages fail to keep up with rent and food prices.
Other unions and professional groups have joined the criticism. The Turkish Union of Engineers and Architects Chambers (TMMOB) said the raise would worsen pay gaps inside the civil service and warned that many engineers and planners could leave public jobs if their pay does not improve.
Mahmut Arıkan, leader of the Islamist opposition Felicity Party (SP), said any such raise should apply to all public workers and retirees, not only to “some managers and career experts” at the top of the state.
Critics say even the head of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), the inflation figures of which are widely blamed for holding down wage hikes since employers take inflation figures as a benchmark, will benefit from the new raise.
Günün fıkrası:
Kendi açıkladığı düşük enflasyonla milyonları yoksullaştıran TÜİK Başkanına 30 bin TL seyyanen zam yapıldı.
— Ümit Dikbayır (@UmitDikbayir) December 2, 2025
Ümit Dikbayır, a lawmaker from the main opposition party, wrote on X on Wednesday that the government was giving a 30,000 lira pay boost to “the person who made millions poorer” through low official inflation data.
Turkey’s annual inflation slowed in November to 31.1 percent, down from 32.87 percent in October.
Turkey has experienced double-digit inflation since 2019, making life increasingly more expensive for millions of people, after President Erdoğan ordered interest rate cuts in a bid to spur growth.
The figure, which exceeded 75 percent in May 2024 before starting to fall, is now at its lowest level since November 2021.
The central bank forecast that year-end inflation would be at 31-33 percent.
The official figures are disputed by independent economists from the Inflation Research Group ENAG, who estimate that consumer prices rose by 56.82 percent year-on-year in November.