How many millions of people living in poverty in Turkey?

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Income Inequality and Poverty report issued in June, Turkey maintains its place among the countries where income inequality is the highest.

According to the Turkish Statistical Institute’s (TÜİK) Income and Living Conditions Survey data, while 20 percent of the population has 46.6 percent of the income, the lowest 20 percent only have a share of 5.9 percent. In other words, there is an eight-fold gap between the top and the bottom.

The answers to the question “How many million people living in poverty are there in Turkey?” always vary. According to a report issued at the end of March, which was based on TÜİK data, 20 percent of Turkey’s population – that is 15 million people – live on the poverty line.

Sociologist Professor Sema Erder who has been conducting research for years in fields such as rural-urban migration, urban transformation, squatting and poverty, gave me an article the other day, which had a different point of view on the number of people living in poverty.

A researcher, Özcan Çağlar, wrote an article in the socialist political culture magazine “Kızılcık,” titled: “Local Election Results and Turkey’s Poverty.”

Çağlar shed light on the number of people living in poverty through the government’s social aid programs.

Looking at the data included in the research, according to the Family and Social Policies Ministry, during the year 2013, around 12 billion Turkish Liras of social aid had been distributed.

Well, how and who received these 12 billion liras?

From the 2012 Social Aid Statistics bulletin...