Turkey’s main opposition party says a 1995 city letter shows President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then mayor of İstanbul, received monthly board fees from seven companies owned by the İstanbul Municipality, in addition to his government salary at the time.
The claim centers on a one-page letter on İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality letterhead that lists payments to Erdoğan starting March 1, 1995.
Cumhurbaşkanı Tayyip Erdoğan’ın İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediye Başkanı olduğu dönemde;
Belediye Başkanlığı maaşına ilave olarak aynı anda 7 ayrı şirketten daha huzur hakkı aldığını tespit ettik.
Her ay toplam 8 maaş! pic.twitter.com/MgjHUI91r8
— Deniz Yavuzyılmaz (@yavuzyilmazd) August 27, 2025
The document surfaced in a post by Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Deniz Yavuzyılmaz and was cited by CHP Chairman Özgür Özel at a rally on Wednesday.
The letter lists monthly net payments of 16,000,000 Turkish lira each from five city companies and 9,060,000 lira from the World Trade Center company, plus a separate annual entry for the municipal culture company. Another line references the concrete unit İSTON.
To gauge the scale, the monthly minimum wage for workers aged 16 and over was 4,173,750 lira between September 1994 and August 1995, then rose to 7,087,500 lira from September 1995. A single 16,000,000 lira fee equaled roughly four monthly minimum wages before that increase.
The totals support the party’s framing that the fees were worth about 24 monthly minimum wages in that period, though one line shows an annual figure rather than a monthly one.
In Turkey large cities own subsidiary companies that run services such as gas distribution, roads and bread factories. Board members of such companies can receive payments that in US usage would be called board fees or board stipends. Under Turkey’s commercial code, a company’s general assembly can grant such payments to board members as compensation for their role.
The presidency and Erdoğan’s party had not issued a response as of Thursday.
The allegation lands in a long debate in Turkey over officials collecting multiple public paychecks or stipends.
In October 2023 lawmakers from Erdoğan’s party and its ally voted down an opposition motion to investigate multiple public salaries. A 2021 poll by independent pollster MetroPOLL found that more than 61 percent of Erdoğan’s own voters opposed officials receiving more than one salary.
The new document does not by itself address whether the payments were lawful. Board fees are allowed under company law when approved by shareholders. The dispute is political over whether such payments were appropriate for a sitting mayor and how they compare to current practice in İstanbul.
Erdoğan rose to national prominence after serving as İstanbul mayor from 1994 to 1998, and although a court conviction forced him from office and imposed a political ban, a 2002 legal change backed by the opposition and a rerun election sent him to parliament in March 2003, clearing the way for him to become prime minister days later and president in 2014.