Turkey’s retirees suffer inflation pain despite pension hike
With soaring inflation in Turkey that has hit all walks of life, the pain of high cost of living is probably felt most by the country’s old-age pensioners, despite the promises by the government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to “crush the people under exorbitant prices.”
“I buy fruits and vegetables at closure time in the neighborhood market because of the cheaper price as sellers want to clear their shelves at the end of the day,” Faruk Ekmen, a 65-year-old pensioner from Turkey’s capital Ankara, told Xinhua.
Talking of his newly raised pension of 4,900 Turkish liras (360 U.S. dollar), Ekmen complained that his pension can barely afford his family’s basic expenses, voicing his concern about the belt-tightening.
Turkey has about 13.4 million state pensioners, 1.3 million of whom receive the lowest pension that rose from 1,500 liras to 2,500 liras at the start of 2022 as a shield from the price hikes. However, it is still way behind the minimum wage of 4,250 liras.
In Turkey, a man can retire at the age of 60 and a woman at 58.
“The price of everything went up last year. Food we could buy with 100 liras then is not comparable to what we can buy today, and the pension hike we experienced in January has already eroded,” said the pensioner Ekmen.
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