President Erdoğan: Employers who wish can pay more! 'Minimum wage is a base wage'

Erdoğan's statements:

(HIT-30 program) In 5 months, we have reached the point of bringing investments exceeding 7 billion dollars in areas such as electric vehicles and solar cells to our country.

(Artificial intelligence technologies) We will either act quickly and catch up with the process, or we will be deprived of an asymmetric power multiplier in the economy. I think that artificial intelligence systems are still not sufficiently understood in our country. As the government, we are trying to prepare Turkey for this new world.

It has been 3 weeks since the old regime in Syria was overthrown, and they still have not grasped the issue. A new administration is taking shape in the US after the presidential election, and again, the opposition approaches every positive sentence established about Turkey from the perspective of domestic politics. The whole world is aware of Turkey's increasing influence, but they cannot explain this to our opposition. Although this picture seems advantageous for the government, it is essentially problematic.

Throughout our 22 years in power, we have believed that Turkey can overcome its crises by growing. We have implemented policies that will ensure this growth in a wide field ranging from economy to defense, from foreign policy to trade. We do not want to be content with temporary successes like soap bubbles, especially in the economy. We are not after short-term calculations. We are taking our steps firmly.

With the May 14-28 elections, our country did not just turn back from the edge of the cliff. At the same time, it gained 5 years, each worth a treasure. We desire to utilize these 5 years in the most efficient way. We did not enter a populist promise race with the opposition in the local elections. Perhaps we paid a political price for this, but we were not involved in any mistake that would make our nation pay a price. We have full confidence in our economic program. Despite new crises, we have largely reached the goals we set. International capital inflow to our country has accelerated. Financing conditions have improved. Our country's credit risk premium has fallen significantly. We are the only country to have received two credit rating upgrades. We also acted with realistic steps in the 2025 budget. We allocated 1 trillion 569 billion liras of resources for investments this year.

MINIMUM WAGE MESSAGE

I explained where the minimum wage has come from in dollar terms at our provincial congress. We respect everything our citizens say, but the sensitivity we have shown in fulfilling our promise not to let our people be crushed by inflation for 22 years is known to everyone. We have always kept wage increases above inflation. In the 2002-2025 period, the real increase in the minimum wage was 290 percent.

In the last few years, while inflation was 64.3 percent in 2022, the minimum wage increased by 94.6 percent. While the inflation expectation was 45 percent in 2024, the minimum wage increased by 49 percent. In 2025, the minimum wage was determined as 22 thousand 104 liras, again with a rate above the year-end inflation expectation. This figure is a base wage. If our employers want to pay their employees more, no one can object to this.

"2500 TL SUPPORT PER EMPLOYEE FOR SMES THAT MEET THE CRITERIA"

We want to maintain our competitive power in the garment, textile, leather, and furniture sectors, which have an annual export of 37 billion dollars and provide employment for more than 1 million 200 thousand workers. We are launching an employment protection program with KOSGEB in January 2025. We plan to make support payments of up to 2500 liras per month per employee to SMEs that maintain their 2024 employment levels in these sectors in 2025.