Retreating State? Political Economy of Welfare Regime Change in Turkey

Abstract

Informed by the debates on the transformation of welfare states in advanced industrial economies, this article evaluates the changing role of the state in welfare provision in Turkey. Turkey's welfare state has long been limited and inegalitarian. Strong family ties coupled with indirect and informal channels of welfare (ranging from agricultural subsidies to informal housing—both costly but politically expedient) have compensated for the welfare vacuum. At first glance, Turkey's welfare reform that emerged from the 2000-2001 fiscal crisis appears like a classic case of moving towards a minimalist, 'neoliberal' welfare regime—with increasingly privatized health care and private social insurance. The state retreats via the subcontracting of welfare provision to private actors, growing involvement of charity organizations, and increasing public-private cooperation in education, health, and anti-poverty schemes. Yet, there is also evidence of the expansion of state power. The newly empowered 'General Directorate of Social Assistance and Solidarity (SYDGM)' manages an ever-increasing budget for social assistance, the number of mean-tested health insurance (Green Card) holders explodes, health care expenditures rise substantially, and municipalities become important liaisons for channeling private money and donations for antipoverty purposes. The cumulative effect is an 'institutional welfare-mix' that has actually mutated so as to compensate for the absence of the earlier, politically attractive but fiscally unsustainable welfare conduits. The result has so far been the creation of immense room for political patronage, the expansion of state power, and no significant improvement of welfare governance.

Impact of healthcare reforms on out-of-pocket health expenditures in Turkey for public insurees

“…Private sector employees in formal sector and blue-collar public workers were covered by the Social Insurance Institution (SII), while the self-employed including those working in agricultural sector were covered by Bag-Kur (BK). 3 There also existed a plan for those who are poor and are unable to pay for health care (''Green Card'' 4 ).…”

“…Unemployed and informally employed were out of the public health insurance coverage. Among the public insurees, 3 The number of people covered by these institutions is not very clear. According to SII statistics, active and retired civil servants make about 15% of population, while SII and BK cover 50 and 23% of the population, respectively.…”

“…2 Change in public health insurance was part of a reform in social welfare system aiming to unify the segmented and B. Erus (&) Á N. Aktakke Economics Department, Bogazici University, Bebek, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: burcay.erus@boun.edu.tr hierarchical system of earlier times. During the process, use of private sector was promoted especially in the provision of healthcare services (see [2][3][4] for a discussion of the reforms in general and [5] for a study by World Bank and OECD on reforms in health).…”

‘In the beginning all is chaos …’: Roaming the Dystopic Realm in Australian Multiculturalism

“…The third and final component of Turkey's neoliberal transformation was the visible privatization of its welfare regime and transition from an informal, but still public, welfare regime, to a minimalist, increasingly privatized welfare provision and social assistance mechanisms (Eder, 2009). While social security reforms increased the age of retirement and eligibility requirements in 2008, the healthcare transformation programme had, since 2003, opened up new avenues for the private healthcare industry to flourish.…”

Social Classes and the Neo-Liberal Poverty Regime in Turkey, 2002–2011

“…Turkey has provided important stylised facts and cases about the emergence of the neoliberal welfare regime (Coşar and Yeğenoğlu 2009;Ercan and Oğuz 2015;Eder 2009;Morvaridi 2013). In this context, this article aims to reveal the social outcomes of the neo-liberal restructuring of the economy and social welfare system in Turkey between 2002 and 2011. 1 For this purpose, a social class-based approach is used to show both the extent of the enlargement of the working class and the parameters of the new welfare regime.…”