89,000 new millionaires created in Turkey in last five months amidst economic crisis

Duvar English

The number of millionaires in Turkey increased by 89,000 in the last five months, as the country has been grappling with increasing poverty amid the economic crisis.

The total wealth of millionaires in the country has reached 3.9 trillion Turkish Liras, according to reporting by Deutsche Welle (DW) Turkish.

Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati had admitted last week that everyone except low-income families were benefitting from the government's current economic model based on low-interest rate.

“Firms, exporters are benefitting from this system, although low-income families are not,” Nebati had said during a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). And the data of Turkey's banking watchdog, Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK), is confirming Nebati's remarks.

The BDDK data show that the number of Turks with 1 million liras or more in their deposit accounts increased from 511,405 to 600,118 during the period of November 2021-April 2022, in a mere five months, according to DW Turkish report. This corresponds to a 17 percent increase, i.e. 88,713 more people.

The wealth of millionaires also saw a considerable increase in this period, as the amount of their total deposits increased from 3.2 trillion liras to 3.9 trillion liras. This marked an increase of 20 percent in their deposit savings, corresponding to 649 billion liras. When this figure was analyzed on an individual basis, it was seen that a millionaire had on average 6.5 million liras in their deposit account as of the end of April.

Some 545,477 of the millionares were based in Turkey, whereas 54,641 consisted of citizens living abroad.

Economist Prof. Dr. Aziz Çelik commented on the data, saying: “Mr. Nureddin Nebati has in fact confessed a reality. This reality is the fact that the economic policies that are being adopted are crushing the low-income, retired, workers and civil servants.”

Çelik said that the low-income and middle-income families consist of 99 percent of the society and that the government's policies are formed in a way that they only serve the interests of the wealthy 1 percent. “There are 21 million people earning a wage/salary in this country. There are 14 million retired people, over 2.5 million agricultural workers, over 5 million small business owners and on top of this, their families. When you put them together, they consist of the country's 99 percent,” he said.