The minimum wage in Turkey is far behind Europe
2023The minimum wage to be applied in Turkey will be determined by the Minimum Wage Determination Commission, which is expected to meet in early December. A month before the meeting, various expectations began to be expressed regarding the new minimum wage. The minimum wage in Turkey was above that of many Eastern European countries until 2015. But since then, the picture has been reversed. Speaking to BBC Turkish, Kocaeli University Prof. Dr. Aziz Çelik said that as the low-income countries that joined the European Union (EU) became part of the common market and the free movement of labor, the minimum wage in these countries began to increase. On the other hand, the minimum wage in Turkey not only lagged behind the EU member countries, but also countries like Serbia and Montenegro outpaced Turkey. In fact, among the 27 European countries included in the data of the European Statistical Office (Eurostat), Turkey became the country with the second lowest minimum wage after Albania. Prof. of Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Business Administration. Dr. Yalçın Karatepe said that the great depreciation of the Turkish lira was also effective in this.
2.14 RAISED FLOOR
Prof. Çelik said that the minimum wage must be at least half the poverty line for a family of four, so that a family with two children working with two parents can stay above the poverty line. According to Türk-İş, the poverty line for a family of four was 24,186 TL in October. Half of this is 12 thousand 93 TL. For the minimum wage to reach this level, it is necessary to increase it 2.19 times, that is, to increase it by 119 percent.
Prof. Dr Aziz Celik
Salary rise does not create inflation, it compensates
There is also concern that an increase in the minimum wage will further increase inflation. Prof. Dr. Yalçın Karatepe said, “Can the rate of inflation be increased by increasing the minimum wage and making people able to pay their natural gas bills?”
‘The minimum wage trap’
Prof. Aziz Çelik also drew attention to the fact that more than half of the workforce in Turkey works for the minimum wage, thus turning the working class into a “minimum wage community”. Çelik said: “While collective bargaining is the determining factor of the basic wage in European countries, the minimum wage is the determining factor of the basic wage in Turkey. This is a very serious problem. I call this the ‘minimum wage trap’. “The minimum wage has become a median wage,” he said.