Anatomy of a laughter

Melisa Ay

Throughout their rule, AKP members, detached from the people and deaf to the demands of the streets, no longer feel the need to hide that they mock the struggle to make ends meet.

Parliament echoed with AKP’s laughter directed at retirees. The clause in the Omnibus Bill regarding the increase of the lowest pensions was voted and approved in the General Assembly the other day. The lowest pension was set at 16,881 TL.

DEVA/New Path Party İstanbul MP Elif Esen was speaking on the subject when scandalous sounds erupted in Parliament. Following her remark that “The lowest pension should be 35,000 TL,” AKP benches broke into laughter.

The disgraceful moment was recorded in the minutes with the phrase “murmurs, laughter from AKP benches.”

Now a minority disconnected from public life, AKP members flaunted their privilege by mocking millions struggling to survive. Lacking public support and detached from reality, the regime once again demonstrated its true nature through its enforcers.

Retirees forced to work even at retirement age in a system of “work until you die, die while working,” and workers, public employees, and wage earners made to live at starvation levels, were mocked by the government. Millions forced to bear the cost of inflation were ridiculed in a parliamentary chamber that has turned into a theatre where AKP members merely recite memorised lines.

THEY’VE CRUSHED THE COUNTRY

Retirees, workers, labourers, women and young people filling streets and squares for a life worthy of human dignity remain unheard by the “Palace people” trying to create the illusion that all is well. In a country where the opposition is silenced by judicial intimidation, deaths occur due to neglect in workshops, factories and holidays, and those seeking rights are suppressed while negligence is called ‘fate’, AKP members once again ‘had fun’ at the expense of those fighting for an honourable life. Convinced that public tenders and state resources allocated to them are their personal wealth, AKP members admitted through laughter that they see the impoverished citizens as beneath them.

HOSTILITY TOWARD THE OPPOSITION

Trying to rebuild its power through judicial means and repression after losing public support, the regime treats all opposition with an enemy’s law. Pressure on the CHP, which emerged as the leading party in the 31 March 2024 local elections, increases daily. The one-man regime imprisoned İstanbul Mayor and CHP Presidential Candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu via judicial operations. Operations that began on 19 March have extended to Adana, Antalya, Adıyaman, and yesterday reached Şile Municipality.

The regime confronted dissenting citizens of all ages and genders with law enforcement and the judiciary. The government has no arguments left to persuade the people on democratisation, economic prosperity or judicial independence. Worried by rising social opposition, the regime shields AKP members with artificial protection. AKP members who dare to laugh at the people’s misery exempt themselves from justice, transparency and accountability. Their power to attack opposition and critical voices stems from seized state institutions. Under Palace control, the judiciary treats cronies and opposition differently.

While jailing those they aim to silence through repression, the regime even ignores life-threatening conditions for its own interest. The latest example of this enemy law practice is Mehmet Murat Çalık, Mayor of Beylikdüzü, arrested as part of the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality investigation. Due to health issues, Çalık was hospitalised again yesterday. Previously treated twice for cancer, he has lost 18 kilos since his arrest on 23 March. Despite a report indicating leukemia risk and heart failure danger, his request to be tried without detention was rejected.

THE POOR PAY THE COST OF THE CRISIS

Despite AKP’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s frequent claim that citizens weren’t crushed by inflation, they have suffered the most. Repeating promises to fix an economy they themselves ruined in the 2023 elections, the government once again failed to deliver. Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek’s statement last week—“Our citizens should rest assured. A clear slowdown in inflation has started and will continue in food, durable goods, education, transport and many other sectors”—sparked backlash.

Even TÜİK’s inflation data, far from reality, was interpreted misleadingly by Şimşek, while data from the sectors he listed showed the opposite. Some of the top price-increase sectors in June included education. Citizens, facing the world’s highest food inflation and the highest inflation in the OECD, were forced to struggle to survive. From housing to health, education to bills, the consumer basket shrank by the day.

Unlike those enriched by public tenders and national resources, the citizens mocked by AKP’s laughter were the ones whose purchasing power was eroded by real inflation.

RESTRICTION AND REPRESSION FOR WORKERS DEMANDING THEIR RIGHTS

Not just retirees, but all citizens surviving through labour were crushed by Şimşek’s policies and capital. With Şimşek’s IMF-style policy without the IMF, no mid-year minimum wage raise has been made since 2023. The minimum wage, now the average wage in the country, barely covers food for 20 days in a month. Though no raise is planned this year either, prices have risen across all categories due to official inflation rates that don’t translate into wages. The minimum wage, already below the hunger line, will remain unchanged mid-year. AKP’s answer to workers protesting wage injustice and capital exploitation was banning strikes. During AKP’s 23-year rule, 21 strikes were banned. According to Prof Dr Aziz Çelik, AKP surpassed Turgut Özal, who banned 11 strikes, and strike bans became arbitrary under the one-man regime.

Workers resisting and using their power through strikes were met with repression. As talks continue on the Public Framework Protocol to determine wage increases for public workers, a 17 percent poverty-level offer drew outrage. Workers are fighting both AKP and confederations that avoid taking action. T. Harb-İş union members launched a march to the capital in response to AKP’s aim to condemn over 600,000 workers to poverty. The march that began in İstanbul is expected to reach Ankara today.

RETIRED BUT STILL WORKING UNTIL DEATH

According to the 6-month official inflation difference, the increase was set at 16.67 percent. This failed to cover real inflation, and the lowest SSK and Bağ-Kur pensions became 16,881 TL. According to AKP Group Chair Abdullah Güler, 4,011,000 people couldn’t even meet 65 percent of the June hunger threshold of 26,115 TL. Even if they gave up all spending except food, they still couldn’t cover a month’s food expenses.

According to Türk-İş, the poverty line in the same month was 85,000 TL. Pensions remained at 19.86 percent of this. To reach the poverty threshold, a household would need the combined pension of five retirees.

AKP’s latest plan for retirees, whom it always calls a “burden on the budget” and treats their pension as charity, is to make them work until they die. By gradually raising the retirement age and paying low pensions, the government extended the effective working life. Retirees died in workplace accidents due to lack of safety measures. Elderly citizens were forced to work to death in construction, guard huts, and workshops. At least 56 workers aged 65 and above died in work accidents in the first half of the year alone.

The calculation that pensions should be at least 35,000 TL is based on regulations altered during the AKP era. Pension calculations are based on the monthly accrual rate. There are three different periods for this: pre-2000, 2000–2008, and post-2008, due to regulation changes. Each period is calculated differently, and the accrual rates have dropped over the years. In other words, the longer one works, the lower the pension. If the 2008 change in premium calculation hadn’t been made, the lowest pension today would be around 35,000 TL.

When AKP came to power in 2002, the lowest pension was 228 TL, almost double the minimum wage. In 2003, it was 47 percent higher than minimum wage. Today, the ratio has dropped to 1.3 with no interim wage raise.

SHAMEFUL

The Union of All Retirees described the laughter from AKP benches as “shameful.” In their written statement:
“We face a government that laughs at the hunger, poverty and misery of retirees! Today, the lowest pension in Türkiye is 16,881 TL. Electricity, natural gas, rent, food, medicine, transport... everything is expensive! This wage doesn’t allow living, let alone making ends meet! This laughter is a slap to the grandparent who can’t give pocket money to their grandchild, the woman gathering rotten vegetables from the market, the person queuing for medicine. But we will send this laughter back! Because we are not helpless!”

THEY EVEN MOCK REAL PAIN

No one but the AKP minority has any security in life. The Palace circle positions itself far from real pain. Not a single official was investigated over the fire at Grand Kartal Hotel in Bolu Kartalkaya where 78 people, including 36 children, died. Even permission to investigate Culture and Tourism Ministry officials was denied. Bolu Governor Abdulaziz Aydın told Duygu Can Sarıtaş, who lost her two children, “The governor is very upset, don’t cry here.”

No ruling came in the second trial against Mısra Öz, who lost her 9-year-old son Oğuz Arda Sel in the Çorlu train massacre, on charges of “insulting a public official.” The indictment cited her reaction after a previous hearing where she was recorded saying, “Film all you want, they’re the Palace’s jesters. All playing the three monkeys. These judges made me the defendant because I said that. They’re letting the killers go free. Not one arrest. My child died.”

Drawing strength from their detachment from real suffering, AKP members act as though exempt from justice. Fatma Zehra Kınık, daughter of former AKP Red Crescent head Kerem Kınık, received a slap-on-the-wrist punishment for causing the death of 16-year-old Batın Barlas Çeki.

Kınık spent just one day in detention and never actually served any prison time.

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Bir kahkahanın anatomisi, published in BirGün newspaper on July 11, 2025.