When you review your employment record and notice certain letters such as S, Ş or K, you should take this seriously. If these letters are not resolved, they can directly affect your ability to retire. Knowing how to remove the letters that appear on the insurance premium list is important in such cases.
Letters on the Insurance Premium List
If you see letters next to the insurance premium list on your employment statement, this should be treated as important. These letters can cause problems such as canceling your retirement rights or your insurance registration. To qualify for retirement, you must be insured through employment, pay premiums as a self-employed person under the 4B scheme, or pay voluntary premiums. Although factors like service days and retirement age matter, ensuring that premiums are paid correctly is essential. Compared with Bağ-Kur retirement, SSK retirement (4A status) generally yields a higher pension, so some people attempt to appear as SSK-insured through practices like “favor insurance.” These irregularities can create serious problems.
Since service statements are easily accessible through the e-Government system, checking your employment record in this way can be very beneficial. The system allows you to see whether insurance was registered, whether premiums were paid, and whether other actions were taken by the Social Security Institution (SGK). If your employment record includes unusual letters, you should pay attention and act accordingly.
Take SGK Codes Seriously
If the Social Security Institution has placed codes—letters—on your service record, you need to take them seriously. To prevent false insurance registrations, the SGK may annotate service records and in some cases cancel a person’s retirement or insurance. Because these annotations can sometimes result from errors, insured individuals must regularly check their records.
Under certain criteria, the SGK uses codes including the letters S, Ş and K. These stand for Sahte İşyeri (Fake Workplace), Şüpheli İşyeri (Suspicious Workplace) and Kontrollü İşyeri (Controlled Workplace), respectively. If the Ş code appears on your service record, it can lead to significant issues.
What to Do to Remove the Codes
If the Ş code appears on your service statement, an inspection process will be initiated for the related workplace. The inspection aims to determine whether false insurance registrations were made by that employer. Until the inspection is complete, the workplace’s Ş code won’t be changed. If the inspection finds evidence of false insurance (for example, “favor insurance”), the code will be changed to S for fake workplace and all related notifications up to that time will be canceled.
If the inspection finds no irregularities, the Ş code will be removed from the list and future service notifications from that workplace will be accepted. There is no fixed timeline for how long such inspections will take. Once the inspection concludes without finding fraud, the employees reported by that workplace will no longer see the Ş code on their service statements, and if they are eligible for retirement, their pensions will be activated. It is important not to overlook a Ş code: if a workplace from a decade ago is marked with Ş and has since closed, it may not be possible to remove the code. For that reason, service statements should be monitored regularly and employers should be asked to take the necessary steps to correct any flagged records.
If inspections determine that reported services were fake or that practices like “favor insurance” occurred, affected individuals may lose their contributed premium days; if they have already retired based on those contributions, their retirement rights can be revoked and pension payments suspended.