Hi erdinc,

Thanks for sharing. I felt I learn something new again about Turkey. So on a scale of 100%, how would you rate the % of the poor, middle, high income people in Turkey. Ok maybe not Turkey, just focus in Istanbul?

thanks for all the information! x

This is a good question. It is also a popular discussion in Turkia. There are statistics on this issue. The main source is Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü (The Official Institute of Statistics).

This is their offical website in English:
http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/

Here are latest figures:
http://www.die.gov.tr/english/SONIST/sonist.html

Here is "The Results of Income Distribution"
http://www.die.gov.tr/ENGLISH/SONIST/GELIR/gelir.html

Here is the latest statistics on this issue:
http://www.die.gov.tr/ENGLISH/SONIST/GELIR/k_270206.xls

They are deviding the total population to quintile (a fifth of total). The richest quintile gets %46 of national total income and the poorest gets %6.

In other words, when considering the total incomes in Turkia for a year, half of it goes to %22 of the population and the other half goes to %78.

erdinc Thanks again. Will check out the sites you mentioned.

Gosh, in my country when it comes to paying tax. No one dares to escape from it. You can get charged for not filing the income tax.

I have to call the authority and make sure the documents were sent to me so that I can fill it in. (thats the olden days, now we do e-filing. You are given a login ID and password, login, enter details and CLICK! There goes your form and of course deduction of the tax from your account) And I have to ensure that it was submitted on time.

These links are very helpful, and I've pasted them into my Turkey folder bookmarks.

Throughout my visit, I was amazed at how well of many people seemed in many cities. I find it surprising that mortgages are not given by banks in turkey, and that people actually have to pay for a home or car with cash! I can't fathom how someone could come up with 100,000 USD- to buy a home, but it seems many do.

I was surprised also not to see any homeless people. In Phila, and many other cities poverty is very visible.

Greetings,
I found new figures about income levels. The biggest worker's union Türk-iş makes researches on this issue for years. They have two income limits that they keep updated.

One is "açlık sınırı" (starvation limit) and the other is
"yoksulluk sınırı" (poverty limit) of income.

According their researches %18 of the population lives under starvation limit and %37 lives under the poverty limit.
The poverty limit is 1867 YTL per family.

If they don't start collecting income tax and if they don't start setting economical law sentences to economical crimes (this is rarely the case) then the poor will get poorer by these indirect taxes.

The only thing that is relatively cheap in Turkia is bread. When I buy bread in Turkia I sometimes see people buying five or more breads. They have nothing better to eat than bread.

Many local authorities in Turkia have founded bread factories. They have hundreds of small shops all over the city where they sell cheaper bread.

Here is one example. They are the biggest in İstanbul in this field.
"established by the İstanbul Great City Municipality"
http://www.ihe.com.tr/english/default.asp

Here is one from Ankara:
http://www.ankhalkekmek.com.tr/main.asp

The poor people don't understand anything from income levels or from income tax or from indirect taxes. The only thing they understand are the price of bread. If the price is good they will again vote for the same party.