Introduction: social policies and social inequalities in contemporary Turkey

ABSTRACT

Turkey undertook a series of social policy reforms in the 2000s, including a large-scale transformation in health care, recalibration of its pension system, the introduction of a new industrial relations regime, reconstruction of its labour market, the launch of a wide range of social assistance programs and alterations in social care arrangements. This wide range of social policy changes and their impact on the patterns of social inequalities in Turkey has created a highly fruitful research agenda that has attracted the considerable interest of academics from different social science disciplines. This special issue contributes to this literature by offering a critical analysis of recent social policy changes and the changing patterns of social inequalities covering an impressive range of issues: social care, child labour, youth unemployment, young women's employment, the role of faith-based organizations in social welfare and the pension reform. This introduction to this special issue briefly reviews the history of social policy development in Turkey and scholarly debates on the direction of social policy changes in the last decade. Then the article examines contemporary policy trends and the patterns of social inequalities in three policy areas, namely, employment and income generation, education, and housing, which are also selected to reveal the changing character of social policy arrangements and to complement the comprehensive picture that this special issue sketches.

KEYWORDS:

• Social policy
• welfare reform
• employment
• education
• housing
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all colleagues contributed to this special issue. A special gratitude I give to Dr Ümit Sönmez who encouraged me to edit this issue. I particularly wish to thank Social Policy Forum researchers Remziye Gül Aslan and Oğuzhan Hışıl for their outstanding support work on this special issue, and Batuğhan Yüzüak and Nazlı Avşaroğlu who read an earlier version of this introduction and made valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Volkan Yılmaz

Volkan Yılmaz is an Assistant Professor of Social Policy and the Director of Social Policy Forum Research Centre at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He took his undergraduate degrees in Political Science & International Relations and Sociology and has a Master’s degree in Modern Turkish History from Boğaziçi University. He holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Leeds. He teaches on comparative social policy, health care policies, humanitarian assistance, and qualitative social research methods. His academic interests include the politics of social policy reforms; health care policies; immigration, humanitarian assistance and social policies; disadvantaged groups (mental health care users, people with disabilities, LGBT+) and social policies. Volkan Yılmaz holds a Newton Advanced Fellowship awarded by the British Academy and hosted by the Department of International Development at King’s. Working with Professor Susan Fairley Murray and Dr Ben Hunter, Yılmaz is conducting new research examining the regulatory challenges in pluralistic healthcare systems. His latest book, The Politics of Health Care Reform in Turkey, was published in 2017 by Palgrave Macmillan.