Children face growing hunger, poverty risks amid cost-of-living crisis in Turkey
ISTANBUL — Zehra’s oldest daughter stopped going to high school this year, not because of her grades – those were “good, actually”, she noted – but due to hunger.
“She would leave at 8:00 AM and stay until 4:30 PM,” Zehra said. “Two or three times I went and picked her up at school because she couldn't stand the stomach aches from hunger. Then, she just dropped out.”
Zehra, an unemployed, single mother of three in Istanbul, does not have the resources to regularly send her kids to school with food or money to buy a meal from the canteen.
"My youngest child sometimes goes to school crying because she can't take anything,” Zehra told Turkey recap. “The other one, too. Sometimes, maybe a sandwich. But it's not always possible, is it?”
Amid Turkey’s spiraling cost-of-living crisis, a growing number of parents are faced with difficult choices on how to make ends meet. At times, they cannot afford essentials like food for their children.
Politicians and civil society activists have long warned that children bear the burden of poverty as family hardships can have ripple effects on the youth throughout their lives in the forms of malnutrition or missed education and work opportunities.
8.72 million children at risk
According to Eurostat data, 8.72 million children in Turkey were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2024, accounting for about 40 percent of the nation’s children.
“We are the leader in Europe both in terms of number and percentage [of child poverty],” political economist İnan Mutlu told Turkey recap.
He added, "At least 30.3 percent of children under 15 cannot consume a meal containing meat, chicken or fish once a day. [That’s] 4.3 million children."
Official data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜIK) also highlights concerning trend lines in childhood nutrition with a 2022 report indicating 62.4 percent of children ate less nutritional foods like pasta and bread on a daily basis.
Such consumption habits are expected to continue or worsen as Turkey’s annual food inflation was officially recorded at 32.8 percent in May 2025. In contrast, worldwide food inflation for the same period was 6 percent, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index.
For reference, the hunger threshold exceeded 25,000 TL in May 2025, while the poverty threshold surpassed 81,000 TL, according to data from the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (Türk-İş). Minimum wage is currently 22,104 TL per month.
Social assistance dependency
The result is a growing number of Turkish citizens are relying on social assistance, with 14.15 million people benefiting from state support in 2024, according to data from the Ministry of Family and Social Services.
The same figures show the number of children benefiting from "Social and Economic Support" increased from 60,029 in 2014 to 174,000 in 2025.
The Ministry of Family and Social Services did not respond to requests for comment.
Zehra’s experience reflects the statistics above. Explaining her current situation further, she states that she is divorced and lives with her three children, ages 15, 12 and 9. She relies on assistance programs but barely gets by.
"My father passed away. I'm left with my father's pension of 13,000 liras [a month],” Zehra said. “I also receive 7,000 liras in Social and Economic Support from the Ministry of Family … and a 500 lira grocery card from the municipality.”
"20,000 liras come into the house. I pay 8,500 in rent,” she continued. “Then there's electricity, water, natural gas. In fact, I currently have three natural gas bills unpaid.”
“Thankfully, they gave my children holiday money, and I paid some of it with that, but nearly 4,000 liras [of debt] is still leftover. If I don't pay this week, they'll come and disconnect my meter. That's how it is."
Asked how many times a week she buys meat, Zehra replies: "It might sound bad, but meat is only from one Eid al-Adha to the next.”
This means, she purchases meat about once a year. Zehra explains that she usually uses her 500-lira voucher card to buy cheese, olives and eggs, sometimes fruit, “but generally, filling things. Pasta, rice.”
Multi-faceted poverty
Hacer Foggo, founder of the Deep Poverty Network, said many families in Turkey are currently experiencing what she describes as “multi-faceted” poverty.
"The families I visit struggle to access basic necessities such as housing, food, education and health,” Foggo told Turkey recap.
She said food insecurity can cause stunted growth and higher obesity risks among children who skip meals or consume cheaper, less healthy foods. Foggo noted that about 1 in 5 children under 15 years of age in Turkey reported skipping a meal due to financial constraints in a 2024 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
“Recent research on malnutrition, both globally and in Turkey, shows that as chronic hunger persists in children living in deep poverty and with inadequate and unhealthy food access, it leads to learning difficulties in the future and shortens life expectancy,” Foggo said.
According to research conducted by the Deep Poverty Network in September 2024, among students living in poverty: 27 percent are at risk of dropping out of school, 47.3 percent never buy anything from the canteen and 40.2 percent buy something from the canteen once a week.
“Only 32 percent are regularly provided with a packed lunch,” Foggo said. “Children are hungry, hungry.”
The risks are more severe in specific regions, such as areas still recovering from the Feb. 6, 2023, earthquakes in southern Turkey.
The Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and the Health and Social Service Workers' Union (SES) recently conducted studies in Hatay and Adıyaman that found malnourished children were exhibiting increased signs of growth stunting and less-than-average weights for their age groups following the disaster.
Parliamentary inquires ignored
Sevda Karaca, an MP with the Labour Party (Emek Partisi), said poverty has ceased to be a problem faced only by a segment of Turkey’s population and is becoming a widespread societal issue with the present-day economic conditions.
“If children in Turkey are hungry today, if they are dropping out of school, if they can't even get in line at the canteen, the reason is not the economic crisis, it is the political choice of the political power that squanders this country's resources on capital groups," Karaca told Turkey recap.
She criticized the policies of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), stating Ankara was failing to effectively address the growing income gap between wage earners and company executives.
As inflation continues to raise prices of basket food items and citizen’s purchasing power diminishes, Karaca said her proposals and parliamentary inquiries on cost-of-living issues continue to be ignored.
“We offer solutions for every issue concerning child rights and every new problem that arises,” she said. “However, until now, we have not received proper answers from government officials to our parliamentary questions regarding children's problems apart from general legislative information."
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