Erdoğan’s palace spent over TL 30 million on food in 2024 – Turkish Minute

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s presidential complex in Ankara’s Beştepe neighborhood spent more than 30 million Turkish lira ($714,000) on food and beverages in 2024, with daily costs nearly quadrupling the country’s monthly minimum wage, the BirGün daily reported Tuesday.

According to the presidency’s 2024 final account statements, kitchen expenses at the presidential palace reached TL 30.1 million ($714,000) last year — an average of TL 80,000 ($1,906) per day. By comparison, Turkey’s net monthly minimum wage stood at TL 17,002 ($405) in 2024.

Of the total kitchen budget, TL 16.1 million ($383,000) was spent on nonalcoholic beverages and TL 10.6 million ($252,000) on food supplies. Additional expenditures included TL 22 million ($524,000) for gardening materials, TL 13.9 million ($331,000) for cleaning equipment, TL 9.1 million ($216,000) for stationery and nearly TL 8 million ($190,000) for medical and laboratory supplies.

Erdoğan’s wife, first lady Emine Erdoğan, drew ridicule and criticism on social media when she suggested reducing food portions and eating fruits and vegetables in season to prevent food waste at a public event in 2021.

“Emine Erdoğan, if you reduce your portions of the meals cooked in the palace, the people [in Turkey] would be healthily fed,” one social media user said at the time, referring to the presidential complex’s lavish spending.

The sprawling presidential complex, built on the grounds of the historic Atatürk Forest Farm and inaugurated in 2014, has long attracted criticism from opposition parties as a symbol of government extravagance. While the government said the construction cost TL 1.37 billion ($32.6 million), opposition lawmakers claim the total public bill exceeded TL 4.8 billion ($114 million).

Critics accuse Erdoğan of lavish spending as citizens face high inflation and declining purchasing power. The president has defended the palace’s expenses, saying, “There can be no savings on prestige.”

Turkey’s annual inflation rose to 33.3 percent in September, marking the first annual increase since inflation peaked at over 85 percent in October 2022, while the Turkish lira has lost more than 130 percent of its value against the dollar since mid-2022, with the exchange rate rising from approximately 17.5 to over 40 lira per dollar in three years.