President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in his speech at the AK Party Parliamentary group meeting, said about the increase in the minimum wage expected by millions of people, "We will most likely announce the minimum wage tomorrow."
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke at the Parliamentary Group Meeting of his party.
Regarding the increase to the minimum wage, Erdogan said, "I hope we will explain the minimum wage issue tomorrow by meeting with my minister today and we will set it on the right path."
Highlights from Erdogan's speech are as follows:
“I pray to my Lord that our group meeting will be beneficial for our country, our nation and all humanity. Before I start my words, I congratulate Argentina, who won the FIFA 2022 World Cup held in Qatar. I congratulate friend and sister Qatar for their successful hosting of the cup organization. We hope to see the days when our National Team brings this trophy to our country.
I wish good luck to the 2023 central government year budget, which was accepted by the Turkish Grand National Assembly last Friday. The negotiations, which started with the presentation of our Vice President Fuat Oktay, lasted for 36 days at the commissions and 12 days at the General Assembly. As a result, we brought a budget of approximately 4,4 trillion liras to our country with an expenditure of 3,8 trillion liras. I congratulate everyone who contributed from the initial preparation stages to the enactment of the budget of the 100th anniversary of our Republic.
I would like to express my gratitude to each of the deputies who conducted the negotiations with a democratic maturity, apart from a few unpleasant appearances, during the 12-day sessions of the General Assembly.
Opposition parties lacking vision, program and project continued to show their incompetence during these meetings. As a matter of fact, when we look at the attitude of the opposition in the budget discussions, we do not see a mind that makes an accounting of the 100-year-old succession of our republic. We cannot see an analysis that evaluates the opportunities in front of our country in the light of regional and global developments. Nor can we see a vision for the second century of our republic. Instead, we have witnessed the calculations of a mentality that constantly repeats lies and slanders, whose answers have been given many times over. Even this picture alone is enough to prove who is worried about the problems of the nation and who is being dragged after other agendas.
Our promise to our nation remains. In education, we built 351 new classrooms at all levels, from kindergarten to high school, appointed 750 thousand new teachers, and launched 131 new universities. We increased the bed capacity of higher education dormitories to 850 thousand.
In the coming period, we will bring more of our citizens under our social support umbrella, according to the changing conditions and needs.
Dear brothers and sisters, we have increased our divided road length from 6 thousand 100 kilometers to 29 thousand kilometers, our highway length from 1714 kilometers to 3 thousand 633 kilometers, our tunnel length from 50 kilometers to 665 kilometers, and our bridge and viaduct length from 311 kilometers to 739 kilometers. We introduced our country to high-speed train lines for the first time. We have implemented huge projects around the world.
We increased our installed power in energy more than 3 times, to over 103 thousand megawatts, and increased our domestic and renewable energy installed power to 65 percent by rapidly developing it.
In the coming period, we will work until we completely eliminate our dependence on foreign energy with new discoveries and investments that will offer the Black Sea natural gas, the first unit of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, to our citizens.
We increased the number of enterprises in the organized industrial zones from 11 thousand to 56 thousand, and the employment in these areas from 415 thousand to 2,3 million.
We have gained global competitiveness in many fields, especially in the defense sector. In the coming period, we will further strengthen our industry by promoting production and exports.
Through TOKİ in urban planning, we have put 1 million 170 thousand houses into the service of our nation with their infrastructure, landscaping and social facilities. We have brought new living spaces to our cities with the people's gardens. In the coming period, we will continue to make millions of our people home and business owners and to prepare our country against climate change with our campaign of 500 thousand residences, 1 million residential plots and 50 thousand workplaces.
In agriculture, we increased the national product of this sector from 37 billion liras to approximately 677 billion liras. We built 716 new dams, 615 new HEPPs, 299 new drinking water facilities, and 1614 new irrigation facilities. In the coming period, we will continue to support our farmers and increase agricultural production.
My dear brothers and sisters, with the vision of the Century of Turkey, we are determined to present much greater achievements to our nation, with the goal of becoming one of the top 10 countries in the world in the new century of our republic.
We sincerely believe that the greatest legacy we will leave to new generations is to make Turkey a country of power and assertiveness at the global level.
We see that the problems that arise due to the reflections of the global crises on our country are gradually easing. While the whole world is grappling with the waves of crisis, we persistently reached and are reaching our goals in Turkey's growth through production and employment. It is becoming clear every day how correct this decision was.
We have made great efforts to eliminate the opportunistic causes of high inflation and high cost of living other than cost increases. We cannot allow the increases to be made to workers, civil servants and pensions from the beginning of the year to melt down due to the greed of opportunists. There is no obstacle other than reducing the inflation to the levels we have determined before our country can reach its targets. Hopefully, we will witness together that inflation will go downhill in the coming months. We want to make 2023 the turning point of our salvation from the scourge of cost of living, among other joys. This time, we will not let anyone come between us with dreams that we had to postpone in the past.
From the minimum wage to the retirement arrangement, we will settle the other topics on our agenda in a short time. I hope that tomorrow, we will explain the minimum wage issue by meeting with my minister today and we will put it on the way. Likewise, we will continue to take steps to finalize the ongoing issues.
As you know, we presented a constitutional proposal to the parliament in the past weeks. The CHP's proposal regarding the headscarf was transformed into a constitutional provision so that Turkey would not be involved in similar discussions about this fundamental right again. We also added a clause to this proposal to protect our family structure from the attacks of global deviant currents. On this occasion, we will have the opportunity to discuss the sincerity of those who attacked the faith of our nation regarding the protection of the family institution, based on the tragedy of a child who was allegedly married at a young age. The discussions at the commission and general assembly stages of our constitutional proposal will serve as a litmus paper showing the sincerity of all parties on democracy, rights and freedoms.
We are constantly launching new packages to strengthen this aspect of 2022, in which we have made significant progress in turning global crises into opportunities. Lastly, we shared with the public the good news of a new financing package worth 200 billion liras for our businesses, with the Treasury's guarantee of 250 billion liras. By putting this development into practice with our public banks, we continue to support our tradesmen, craftsmen, SMEs and farmers within the framework of their priority areas of responsibility. The entire interest of the 600 billion lira loan used by approximately 56 thousand farmers is paid by the state.
By the end of the year, I believe that Turkey will close this year with a growth of 4-5 percent.
We will not let the damage caused by those who misuse the low-cost loan obtained from the bank with the self-sacrifice of the state.
We receive news of a new project every day in the defense industry. KIZILELMA, our first unmanned fighter aircraft, successfully performed its first flight by staying in the air for 5 hours. As we progress in these projects, the discomfort of someone inside and outside increases.
Undoubtedly, 2023 will be a very fruitful year for our defense industry projects. Since it will take a long time to count one by one, I will only say that in 2023, we will actually implement 25 different defense industry projects, each of which has a different importance.”
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