Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz has announced that Ankara will begin piloting an income “top-up” scheme for low-earning families in 2026, with plans to roll it out nationwide in 2027.
Addressing parliament, Yılmaz said the Income Supplementary Family Support System – widely dubbed a “citizenship salary” – will set an official income threshold for each household and transfer the difference when a family’s earnings fall below that line. All major welfare and social support programs are to be folded into this single framework, which the government presents as a structural overhaul of social assistance.
Yılmaz argued that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has built one of the strongest social policy records in the country’s history and credited welfare programs with playing a significant role in the party’s electoral success over the past 23 years. He stressed that the new scheme will target families below the threshold but is designed “not to discourage participation in the labor market,” positioning it as a complement to employment rather than a substitute.
He also defended the controversial use of the Unemployment Insurance Fund to finance broader labor-market measures. According to Yılmaz, 61 percent of the fund’s spending goes directly to workers and the unemployed, 36 percent to job-creation and job-protection programs, and roughly 3 percent to administrative costs, a distribution he said is in line with existing legislation.
The announcement comes amid a prolonged cost-of-living crisis and still-high inflation. Official annual consumer inflation eased to around 31 percent in November 2025 after much higher levels in previous years, but independent analysts say many households remain under intense pressure. Trade union data show the “hunger line” for a family of four has climbed above 25,000 lira and the poverty line above 80,000 lira, far outstripping the current net minimum wage of 22,104 lira. Against this backdrop, the number of people receiving social assistance has surged into the tens of millions.
Critics warn that layering a new “citizenship salary” on top of this landscape risks deepening political dependence on the AKP rather than empowering citizens. Previous academic research on Turkey’s welfare regime, including work by sociologist Denizcan Kutlu, has described social assistance as a form of “non-wage income” for the poor that helps contain anger over inequality and can translate into electoral loyalty for incumbents in low-income districts.
Some critics frame the project as part of this pattern. They question whether the plan represents a genuine social-state reform, a charity-style handout or simply an election investment. He argued that the government’s design resembles a conditional and temporary transfer, not a universal entitlement, and said it appears to “manage” poverty rather than eliminate it by keeping low-income households permanently reliant on state aid.
Supporters of the late politician Haydar Baş and his small opposition party, which for years advocated its own model of “citizenship income,” accuse the government of appropriating their idea while emptying it of its universalist content. They argue that the new proposal restricts payments to low-income households and ties eligibility to work and income status instead of recognizing a guaranteed income as a right for every citizen, regardless of earnings.
Whether the Income Supplementary Family Support System becomes a step toward a more coherent safety net or another instrument of political patronage will likely depend on the fine print: how the income threshold is set, how benefits are adjusted for inflation, and how transparent the allocation of funds remains in the run-up to future elections.
