Voters in Turkey will once again head to the polls on Sunday for part two of what’s been described as the most important election in a generation. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s first-round lead prompted expectations that he is likely to maintain his 20-year grip on power. But he doesn’t have a public plan to correct the country’s red-hot inflation, and that’s a concern for some of Turkey’s older voters who are thinking about their retirement savings.

Gönül Ergin is a 72-year-old former English teacher who says retirement with her husband right now is comfortable. “We don’t have much difficulty in our daily life,” she said.

But inflation in Turkey is at 44%, down from the official high of 85.5% last fall. Ergin worries about their retirement savings long term. 

“We are afraid for our future. So we try to save money, because we are getting older and we may need it in our old ages for our health and other needs. That’s why really, we are afraid,” she said. “My children’s family and we may live together. I never want to do this, it’s not so easy really.”

One out of every 10 Turks is over 65, but their golden years are increasingly worrisome.

“They tend to focus on daily purchases, emergency savings, but not on their long-term savings,” said Seda Peksevim, founder of Pensión Research & Consulting based in Istanbul. 

“People sometimes consider taking a second job,” she said, referring to ad hoc work like driving a taxi or other odd jobs. “And some people choose to focus on informal employment; they only want to survive in a daily form.”

In 2021, the Istanbul Political Research Institute found that 12% of Turks over 65 were still working, in part because pensions are not adequate. Still, President Erdogan changed retirement requirements that then allowed two million Turks to retire early. It was one of his moves to gain support ahead of the election. 

Now, people as young as 45 can retire, like Selami Çalışkan.

“Things are a little bit expensive. But we believe that [President Erdogan] is going to do better,” he said. “I am not working, but I think I might have to work again. I was in the the iron and steel industry. 

He insisted that there are no economic problems in Turkey — that any difficulties have come from the after effects of the global coronavirus pandemic, which countries around the world have also had to deal with. He’s hopeful that things will get better if the president is reelected on Sunday.

Retired schoolteacher Gönül Ergin is less hopeful. “We have been living with this for 22 years,” she said. “We can’t hope that in the future we will be much better than this.”

If President Erdogan wins, he says he will continue to cut interest rates. That unorthodox policy has stoked inflation and eroded many Turks’ long-term savings.