Excerpt from Daniel Grütjen (2008) “The Turkish Welfare Regime: an Example of the Southern European Model? The Role of the State, Market and Family in Welfare Provision”, Turkish Policy Quarterly, vol.7, no.1, pp.111-129.
The classification of the Turkish welfare regime clearly shows that Turkey fits the key characteristics of the ideal type of the Southern European Model. The cross-national comparison unveiled only a few deviations from the Southern European Model, such as the low impact of civil society, market actors and regional authorities in Turkey and its non-universalistic health system.
Besides, the similarities are remarkable. The Turkish social security system strongly protects an occupational core, the level of state penetration in the social realm is extremely low and a safety net in form of a social assistance scheme is absent. The most significant common trait of the welfare regimes in Turkey and the rest of Southern Europe is the importance of the family as a main institution of welfare.
This status is also endorsed by the state through modeling its social policies after a Family and Kin Solidarity Model. For a significant part of the Turkish population the family is the main and often the only safety net and provider of social services. Focusing on the impact of the recent social policy reforms it becomes obvious that Turkey on the one hand follows the path of Southern European welfare. On the other hand, differences remain when it comes to sustain the state’s role of welfare provision. While the AKP government tries to back out of the pension system and delegates more responsibilities to the market, the Mediterranean EU-member states have shown a remarkable performance in increasing their social expenditures towards European average. Without a doubt, some of the recent changes in Turkey, i.e. the fact that the state pays for the health contributions of all citizens under the age of 18 years, are of fundamental importance. Nevertheless, if a contribution based health system has the capacity to protect the Turkish citizens from health risks appears questionable.
What Turkey needs is a cognitive change that leads to a new perception of social security as a core responsibility of the central state. In a modern society, welfare cannot be left to the realm of the family and private actors only, but has to be based on citizenship and guaranteed by social rights. Without this change in attitude Turkey will not be able to tackle the tremendous social challenges of the 21st century.
Changing Turkey in a Changing World 