President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a longtime champion of bigger families, warned that Türkiye was going through a disaster in terms of birth rates.

The Turkish leader, who declared 2025 as the “Year of the Family,” addressed participants at the closing ceremony of the Family and Culture-Arts Symposium at the National Library in Ankara on Thursday.

“Our population is increasing, but the rate it is increasing is declining. According to data by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), last year’s fertility rate was 1.48,” he said. Erdoğan was referring to the total fertility rate, or the average number of live births a woman would have in her average reproductive life. “No one who cares about the future of this country can remain indifferent in the face of this reality,” Erdoğan said.

The elderly population ratio has also risen to 10.6% and it is projected that by 2050, one in every four people will be over the age of 65.

The country’s fertility rate remains below the population replacement threshold of 2.1. With one in every 10 people currently over the age of 65, Türkiye is classified as a “very aged population” country by United Nations criteria. Population projections show that by 2050, one in every four people will be over 65; by 2075, one in every three; and by 2100, four out of every 10 people will be in this age group.

Erdoğan repeatedly warned in earlier speeches that the matter is “self-destructive” for Türkiye and reiterated his warning on Thursday. “Another crucial issue is the fertility rate among employed women. It is 1.38 according to the 2022 data, while it is 1.72 among unemployed women. It is apparent that working life has a limited impact on fertility rate, but unemployed women also have a declining birth rate. Certainly, the main factor here is that women are getting lonelier, especially in cities. To be honest, women cannot receive sufficient support from their spouses while rearing children. Most of the burden is on women’s shoulders. I call upon all fathers to help their wives more and spend more time with their children,” Erdoğan also advised.

According to experts, this decline is connected to factors like higher education levels, as women are prioritizing education instead of building a family.

Experts also attribute the decrease in urbanization and economic challenges to the decrease and argue that since more people are moving to the cities, it has become harder for families to afford to have children.

“Young people tend to marry at a later age nowadays, according to the data. Our society is putting more emphasis on living individually, and people are getting lonelier,” Erdoğan lamented. He said migration from rural areas to big cities and the impact of neoliberal culture led to major shifts in every aspect of life and highlighted that Ankara prioritizes the family institution for this reason. Erdoğan also pointed out incentives to prospective couples, including grants and an increase in benefits provided to new parents.