11 pct of Turkey’s population ‘retired’

ANKARA

More than 9 million retirees live in Turkey, making up 11 percent of the country’s total population.

Turkey marks June 30 as Retirees’ Day as on June 30, 1927, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, retired.

The number of people aged 65 and older increased from 6.5 million in 2005 to nearly 8 million in 2020, rising 22.5 percent in five years.

The number of retirees in Turkey is larger than the population of some countries in the world, including Austria, Switzerland, Israel, Jordan and Libya.

Some 13.4 million people, including retirees, widowers and those who receive their parents’ stipends, benefit from the Social Security Institution’s (SGK) payment scheme, accounting for around 16 percent of the county’s population.

Payments to those over 13 million beneficiaries through the SGK amounted to around 350 billion Turkish Liras (around $41.3bn) last year.

According to some official documents discovered in 2004, Atatürk was paid 50 liras as a monthly pension from 1927 until he died in 1938.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s young population accounted for 15.6 percent of the total population in 2019, down by 0.2 percentage points on a yearly basis.

The country’s statistical institute, TUİK, noted that this young population would drop in the coming decades, down to 14.8 percent in 2023, 14 percent in 2030, 13.4 percent in 2040, 11.8 percent in 2060 and 11.1 percent in 2080, respectively.