Mehmet Müezzinoğlu

Grandmothers who look after their grandchildren while their parents are at work will be offered financial support in a pilot project, Labor Minister Mehmet Müezzinoğlu has said. 

Turkey will raise the monthly minimum wage by 8 percent to 1,404 Turkish liras ($397), Labor Minister Mehmet Müezzinoğlu said at a press conference on Dec. 29 in Ankara, a level that trade unions did not welcome. 

One of the articles included in the constitutional amendments jointly proposed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) centers on who is eligible to be elected as president.  

The U.S. dollar reached a historic high of 3.4998 Turkish Liras on Dec. 1 in the afternoon, as the euro rose to 3.7162, again an all-time high.

The Borsa Istanbul also lost some 2 percent.

After this column argued last week that "Turkey's identity crisis is too persistent to disappear, even after decades of soul-searching, Turkey is too Islamic to belong to Europe, too secular and non-Arab to belong to an Islamic club, too Sunni to find a seat in any Shiite Muslim club, too Turkish to find allies in a Eurasian pact, and too alien to find a meaningful African alliance," a most dea

Cigarette packages will no longer be displayed in shops selling tobacco products and new regulations on their sales will be implemented, according to a statement by the Health Ministry.  

The statement also said cigarette brands will no longer be visible on packages according to the new regulation. 

Public workers with suspected links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) will be dismissed, Labor and Social Policies Minister Mehmet Müezzinoğlu has announced. 

Statements they share on Twitter will also be evaluated as a criterion in order to determine if they are linked to the outlawed group, he said. 

The plan to not reduce the minimum wage due to the rise in income taxes will cost the state budget 1 billion Turkish Liras ($336 million), said a top official in a televised interview on Sept. 21. 

The Turkish cabinet has pledged to not decrease the minimum wage due to the increasing cuts in incomes, said a leading official on Sept. 19. 

Turkey raised the minimum wage by 30 percent to 1,300 Turkish Liras ($436) for over 8 million workers at the beginning of the year.

A cabinet revision is reportedly underway in Turkey, where the country's interior minister recently resigned, as at least five or six ministers could be changed with the start of the new legislative year, daily Cumhuriyet reported on Sept. 19.