Turkey pension and funeral benefit disparities under scrutiny

Legal and financial discussions are ongoing in Turkey regarding pension adjustments and disparities in state death benefits.

A legal process is currently underway at the Constitutional Court concerning whether the 8,077 lira supplemental payment granted to active civil servants in 2023 should also be applied to civil servant retirees. While individual applications have been merged for evaluation, no official decision has been made to implement a new supplemental raise or retroactive payments for retirees.

Separately, significant disparities have been noted in the funeral and death assistance payments provided by the state. As of July 2026, funeral benefits for SSK and Bağ-Kur workers remain at 6,398 lira, whereas death assistance for active members of parliament has reached 179,608 lira. This represents a nearly 28-fold difference. Unlike the benefits for civil servants and parliamentarians, which are indexed to salary coefficients and updated regularly, the assistance for SSK and Bağ-Kur workers has not seen an increase since January.