Turkey's ‘Catching up' with the Southern European Welfare Regime: What Does This Mean for Welfare Regime Debates?

This paper traces the transformation of the Turkish social security system in the neoliberal era in light of the welfare regime debate. Contrary to scholarly, policy practitioner and popular public expectations, it shows that on many measures the Turkish welfare system has in fact been ‘catching up’ with the Southern European Welfare Regime. We build on social expenditures (OECD’s SOCX) and social rights data (as operationalized through Social Citizenship Indicator Program, Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset, Social Assistance and Minimum Income Protection Dataset) generated originally for this research. Based on this data, we carry out cluster analyses (hierarchical and k-means) in order to locate Turkey’s welfare state in relation to other welfare regimes. The paper shows how Turkey gradually transformed from a residual to a more institutionalized welfare state, which, in some ways, resembles European welfare states. We find, in line with existing comparative historical research findings, striking similarities with the Southern European Welfare Regime: a relatively generous social insurance system protecting ‘insiders’ where ‘outsiders’ having to rely on a minimal social assistance system and remaining largely outside of statutory rights. As agricultural and informal employment decreases only slowly, a significant part of the population remains outside of the social insurance system and is thus largely unprotected. The fact that Turkey shares key features of the Southern European Welfare Regimes strengthens existing research on the distinctiveness of the Southern Regime. However, the paper also calls into question recent theories that emphasize the role of religion in welfare regimes formation.