ANKARA: Thousands of people protested in Turkey’s capital Ankara on Saturday to demand a bigger hike in the minimum wage, chanting slogans calling on the government to resign and waving the opposition and national flags. The government announced this week that the net monthly minimum wage in 2025 will be 22,104 Turkish lira ($630.28), a 30 percent increase from 2024. The government said the level was set to maintain fiscal discipline and continue the fight against inflation.

Turkish workers, who have faced a persistent cost-of-living crisis with an expected annual inflation of 45 percent this year, had called for an increase of around 70 percent in total: a 45 percent inflation adjustment and a 20 percent welfare increase. Turkey’s main opposition CHP called Saturday’s protest, saying the minimum wage increase showed President Tayyip Erdogan’s government “lost touch with the realities of Turkey.”

“They say that inflation would increase as much as the minimum wage is increased. This is a big lie. There was no minimum wage increase throughout the year, and we still have 50 percent inflation,” CHP leader Ozgur Ozel told the rally. There were additional mid-year hikes to the minimum wage in 2023 and 2022, due to high inflation.

“While hundreds of thousands of people here are calling for your resignation, Mr. Erdogan, you cannot avoid elections. If there’s no bread and butter, there should be elections,” Ozel said.

Presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey are scheduled for 2028. Erdogan, speaking at a meeting of his AK Party (AKP) in northwestern city of Bursa, said the minimum wage increase was determined by taking factors including inflation and employment into consideration.

Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said the minimum wage increased in 2023 and 2024 more than the annual inflation. “Price stability is a prerequisite for the permanent increase in the purchasing power and welfare of our workers,” Simsek said on X. The minimum wage hike will affect some nine million workers.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that there would be more interest rate cuts in 2025 after the central bank cut its key rate by 250 basis points to 47.5 percent this week.

The Turkish central bank trimmed the one-week repo rate after an 18-month tightening effort that reversed years of unorthodox economic policies and easy money championed by Erdogan, who has since changed tack to back the program. “Priority in our economy program is to lower the inflation... We will hopefully reduce inflation to the required level by using other tools at our disposal in addition to the monetary policy,” Erdogan told members of his AK Party (AKP) in northwestern city of Bursa.

“We will definitely start lowering the interest rates. 2025 will be the landmark year for this,” he said. “Interest rates will decrease so that inflation will decrease. We will take this step. This is now indispensable for us.” Erdogan, who once described interest rates as his “biggest enemy,” said last month that inflation would fall alongside the interest rate.

The central bank earlier announced that it had reduced the number of scheduled policy meetings next year to eight from 12 in 2024. According to a Reuters poll’s median, the central bank is expected to ease rates to about 28.5 percent by the end of 2025, with forecasts ranging between 25 percent and 33 percent. — Reuters