Ministry cancels bureaucrats’ illegal SGK registrations

The social security registrations of these children were later cancelled.

Prior to legislation in July 2008, which is anticipated to gradually increase the retirement age to 65 by 2048 as well as decrease pensions, people flocked to social security offices to register their infants with the SGK, believing their move would minimize the effects of the new retirement law. In the previous system, people were able to retire as early as 40, provided they fulfilled the minimum number of workdays to be eligible for retirement.

In Turkey, children under the age of 15 are prohibited to work. This means a person can register with the SGK no earlier than age 16. Having detected illegal registrations to this end, the government cancelled the social security registrations of more than 50,000 children under 15 in 2008. Following the cancellations, thousands of people applied to the SGK, complaining that some children of public servants were still registered while their children’s insurance was cancelled. Taking the complaints into consideration, the Ministry of Labor opened an investigation into some 20 bureaucrats who had their children registered with the SGK illegally. The ministry inspectors discovered that the public servants registered their children in such companies as advertising agencies and print shops in order to secure an early retirement for them. The ministry then learned all of the children were registered in the same month, April 2008. The ministry also revealed that between 2005 and 2008, the number of children under the age of 15 to be registered with the SGK was two annually. However, this number skyrocketed to 508,000 in 2008, particularly due to attempts to register children with the SGK for early retirement prior to July’s legislation.