What a developer costs you as an employer in Türkiye

Founders modelling a move to Türkiye usually start from salary. They find a figure for what a mid-level engineer earns in Istanbul, multiply by headcount, and put it in the plan.

The number a developer receives and the number that leaves your bank account are different, and the gap is predictable enough to model properly. We covered what a salary buys the person receiving it. This is the same payroll seen from the other side.

The contribution rates

Employer contributions in Türkiye are a percentage of gross pay, and they went up this year. From 1 January 2026 the social security employer share stands at 21.75%, having been 20.75% through 2025. On top of that sits the employer's unemployment insurance contribution of 2%.

Added together, the employer pays 23.75% of gross on a salary within the contribution band.

The employee also pays, out of their gross, and their deductions are what turn a gross figure into the net a candidate cares about. For your budgeting the relevant number is the employer share, because that sits on top.

The published minimum wage figures make the arithmetic concrete. Gross monthly minimum wage for 2026 is 33,030 TL, about $692. Net to the employee is 28,075.50 TL. Total cost to an employer with no incentive applied is 40,874.63 TL, roughly $857.

That is 33,030 multiplied by 1.2375, which is the 23.75% above, and it is the ratio to carry into a plan before anything else is counted.

The ceiling, and why it matters for engineers

Contributions are not charged on unlimited earnings. They are calculated on a band, and for 2026 the monthly ceiling is 297,270 TL, which is about $6,232 at current rates.

Two things follow.

The ceiling changed. It used to be 7.5 times the minimum wage and it is now 9 times, so it kicks in at a higher salary than it did last year.

For most engineering salaries in Türkiye it does not bind at all. A developer on the equivalent of $3,000 a month is well below it, so the full 23.75% applies to their whole gross. The ceiling becomes relevant for senior leadership and for founders paying themselves properly, where the marginal cost of additional salary drops once the band is exhausted.

Model the 23.75% as applying in full unless you are budgeting above roughly $6,200 a month per person.

Severance is the line people forget

Kıdem tazminatı accrues for employees with at least one year of service, at broadly one month's gross pay for each year worked. It is paid on termination in the circumstances the law specifies, and it is capped.

The ceiling resets twice a year. For the first half of 2026 it is 64,948.77 TL for each year of service, about $1,362.

This is a liability rather than a monthly cost, which is why it slips out of models built from a payroll spreadsheet. A team of ten with three years of average tenure is carrying a real number, and it becomes visible at exactly the moment a company is least able to absorb it, which is during a restructuring.

Treat it as an accrual from the first hire.

Where the reliefs sit, and the trap in taking them

Türkiye offers several ways to reduce the employer contribution. The general one is the five point discount under Article 81(1)(ı) of Social Insurance Law No. 5510. Manufacturers get more. Teknopark and R&D employers have their own premium supports, which is a large part of why companies locate there.

Before you take one for a given person, check the interaction with the export incentives.

Decision 10962 supports the employment cost of sales, marketing and business development staff, up to five people under the standard programme and up to ten under the Branding Programme. It also provides that a person who has had support applied for under other legislation reducing their employment cost, in the same period, is not supported here. Two things are carved out and stay compatible: that five point discount, and the minimum wage support.

So the reliefs are not additive per person. An engineer sitting under a teknopark premium support stays there. A commercial hire not covered by anything else is the one the cash programme is built for. Whether the incentives stack works through the rest of that interaction.

A working multiplier

For planning purposes, before incentives, most companies here use something close to 1.30 times gross as the fully loaded monthly cost of an employee below the contribution ceiling. That is the 23.75% of employer contributions plus a severance accrual of about a twelfth of pay, and it is close enough to build a first plan on.

Two refinements make it more accurate for your own case. If your engineers will sit in a teknopark or under R&D centre status, the employer share falls and the multiplier with it. If your commercial team is claimable under Decision 10962, part of that cost comes back through a different route entirely, which does not change the multiplier but does change the net.

The rest of the operating picture, from office costs to which city to base in, is in Istanbul or Ankara and which Istanbul teknopark to join.