Overview

Due to having a generally young population, Turkey had no need to regulate direct age discrimination against older employees. Nevertheless, the issue is touched upon. Indirect discrimination against employees who reach retirement age is regulated. There is a law about the minimum age that an employee can be. It states the minimum ages of employees that the employers may employ in different categories of work. Other than this, some laws define retirement ages which are different for both men and women. Today, the retirement ages for men and women are 58 and 60 respectively. Government officers are not allowed to be employed in government by the age of 65, due to the Association of Pension Fund's laws, but may be employed in private sectors.

In Turkey, people are protected by the age discrimination regulations which used to belong to one of the three institutions: the Social Security Institution for employees, the Social Security Organisation for Artisans and Self-Employed, the Association of Pension Fund for the government officers. These three institutions are merged under one institution, in order to eliminate differences of the rights and obligations between groups of employees. The laws and regulations in effect specify retirement ages for different professions.

In Turkey retirement cannot be the only reason for the termination of the Labour Agreement. The agreement can be terminated based on behaviour or productivity of an employee. Retirement can only be a supplementary reason for the termination and must not be the only factor. If an employer terminates the agreement based on retirement of the employee, it will be a termination without a valid reason and this may have certain legal consequences for the employer. However, some companies have their own regulations for employees, which may set down the employer’s retirement age for the company.

Contrarily, in one of its decisions, the Supreme Court ruled that termination of the employment agreement based on age may not be considered as a justifiable ground. The Supreme Court ruled against the employer, who had terminated the agreement based on the fact that the employee had passed the age of 60, which was the employer’s stated age of retirement. The company was ordered to pay notice pay to the employee. The existence of the regulations does not affect the view of the Supreme Court. In practice the Supreme Court always protects the rights of the employees.

There are only a few claims about age discrimination in Turkey. However a new social security system was in force as of 2007 and we hope employees may be protected in a more effective way. Furthermore, age discrimination in Turkey could be further protected if Turkey is able to accede to the EU. The country will need to harmonise its laws with other EU states and will have to comply with existing EU laws on age discrimination.