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Middle Eastern Studies

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Change and Continuity under an Eclectic Social Security Regime: The Case of Turkey
Aye Bugra & Aysen Candas Available online: 19 May 2011

To cite this article: Aye Bugra & Aysen Candas (2011): Change and Continuity under an Eclectic Social Security Regime: The Case of Turkey, Middle Eastern Studies, 47:3, 515-528 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2011.565145

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Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 47, No. 3, 515528, May 2011

Change and Continuity under an Eclectic Social Security Regime: The Case of Turkey
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AYSE BUGRA & AYSEN CANDAS

Among the ideas, policies, laws and practices which shape the recent transformations in globalizing economies, new ways of thinking about social security and social solidarity rank high in terms of their power to remould societies. As an integral aspect of these transformations, a reinvigorated social policy debate asserts itself along with the general trend towards the expansion of the market. Given the impact of pro-market policies on the relatively disadvantaged groups, a rethinking of social security and social solidarity inevitably emerges. Diverse approaches to social support and social security informed by disparate conceptions of social solidarity shape political debates. While continuity and change tread simultaneously, the major variable that has long been purged out in our neoliberal times, namely politics, once again enters the scene as the key factor that can determine the outcome. Despite the fact that market-oriented policies were paired with social policy debates and their politics almost everywhere, the new politics of social policy assumes, at least part of its character, from the tenets of the already existing institutional framework.1 For instance, in societies with mature welfare states, the social resistance of those who are formally covered by the social security regime does not fail to emerge and usually successfully sets itself against the dismantling of the levels of social protection already attained.2 Moreover, in many countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa where social rights have either been non-existent or limited in scope and coverage, the need for new mechanisms for social protection has been acknowledged, albeit under dierent agendas or conceptions of social solidarity.3 These agendas are about the revitalization of traditional forms of solidarity as well as the rise of new demands for rights-based social policy intervention. The proliferation of new political agendas reshues the political antagonisms, and introduces contending ways of imagining politics, society and the social relations therein. While the recent literature on the transformation of social security regimes and welfare states notes that globalization is not producing uniform outcomes, a new body of research is emerging which investigates the underlying causes for the disparate outcomes generated in various contexts as responses to the expansion of self-regulating markets.4 Some argue that the inherited system of social security
ISSN 0026-3206 Print/1743-7881 Online/11/030515-14 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2011.565145

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continues to shape both the impact of and the responses to the global reach of the market economy.5 This version of the path dependency argument has particularly been noted to be prevalent in the case of the Bismarckian social security regimes, which have traditionally maintained social stratication through benets that reect the status at work of the beneciaries and reinforced the dependent status of women in conformity with the male breadwinner model. Palier and Martin shed some doubt on the resiliency and even frozenness thesis that has been employed to explain the relative lack of change in Bismarckian regimes, while Filgueira showed that the social states of Latin America with their universalist, dualist and exclusionary characteristics are transforming themselves in various directions.6 These researchers convincingly argue that most countries that have inherited Bismarckian, dualist and exclusionary attributes are indeed getting transformed, some towards more neoliberal directions and some towards more universalist and egalitarian structures. While these analyses are certainly helpful, applying them to the cases which, instead of mature or liberal or social democratic welfare states, host a peculiar combination of Bismarckian conservativism, stratication and dualism with exclusion and informality, or what we would like to call, eclectic social security regimes show that, prognosis might be less predictable in those cases. It seems that the more eclectic the inherited social security regime is, and the more fragmented the constituency has become due to getting covered by diverse institutions, the easier it gets for the state to dismantle social security in the short run without running into a powerful political opposition. What happens in the long run can prove to be less predictable however, for eclectic formations, once dismantled, can also be remoulded in unprecedented ways. Thus the long term changes in the social security regime also depend on politics, and specically on the political coalitions that the formerly fragmented constituency of the eclectic regime can forge. Though more resilient to change initially, eclectic regimes with high level of informality alongside Bismarckian features can prove to be more prone to rapid structural transformation. With reference to the particular case of Turkey, this article seeks to illustrate the rediscovery of social policy in a corporatist context, and is subject to the global market forces in the same compartment with others. What is getting dismantled in Turkey through a market-oriented economic strategy implemented in conformity with the global trends is not a welfare state that has been universally applied to all citizens, but an eclectic social state formation that can best be described as a dual citizenship model with a Bismarckian formal social security system that also incorporates informality and clientelism. Given the historical features of its sociopolitical structure, the contending social solidarity models that arise as responses to the dismantling of the eclectic status model consist of the reassertion of traditional forms of solidarity, and the discovery of social rights as an aspect of equal citizenship. Needless to say, these two political agendas are antithetical to one another in terms of the conception of society and the form of solidarity that they entail. It must be underlined that the particular responses to the challenges of a changing economic order initiated in Turkey are in conformity with the global trends. The persistence of the search for social solidarity and its rising prominence through the implementation of liberal economic policies once again show that Polanyis prognosis about the market society was accurate. Polanyi examined the nineteenth

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century market society in its exceptional character which sought to subordinate the economic activity in its totality to market exchange.7 For Polanyi, this unusual state of aairs was bound to trigger a social reaction as the society tries to protect itself against the ravages of the self-regulated market. State intervention was necessary both to assure the formation of the market system and to supervise the expansion of the market in order to protect society. This denes the dynamics of the double movement, which, according to Polanyi, marked the nineteenth century developments toward the global reach of the market. It is not dicult to collect evidence conrming the relevance of the double movement also to the twenty-rst centurys societies. Contemporary societies, too, strive to protect themselves from the impact of the expansion of markets and ght against commodication and dissolution.8 Alongside similarities however, the contemporary market society also contains certain dierences to the nineteenth century example analyzed by Polanyi. In Polanyis analysis, the institutional realms of market exchange, state redistribution, and reciprocity relations remain clearly delineated. It is dicult to say that this clear delineation still holds today given the pivotal role assigned to the publicprivate NGO partnerships as crucial aspects of contemporary systems of welfare governance. The debates around social capital, the rise of religious associations and brotherhoods as civil society initiatives and business partnerships, and the associated increase in philanthropic activity are, after all, some widely shared features of the new welfare governance that are valid across various contexts today.9 The reliance on traditional or contemporary forms of social support found in relations of kinship, private benevolence and philanthropy is situated in a complex institutional framework that incorporates state as well as non-state actors. Accordingly, what is prevalent today is a blurring of the boundaries between the state, the private sector and civil society. If the political struggles culminate in reinforcing this blurring of the boundaries, the dismantling of formal welfare institutions could be accompanied by processes whereby the traditional, socially conservative and family-preserving features become increasingly dominant. Eclectic security systems could thus preserve status dierences, but less so through maintaining the acquired privileges of the formally covered groups but through regressing to traditional forms of conservatism and relying increasingly on informal networks of support. Nevertheless, the current social policy environment also incorporates a rightsbased political agenda as observed in the emergence of the basic income debate even in those contexts that formerly lacked welfare states, such as in South Africa and Brazil. These examples testify to the fact that alternative conceptions and regimes of social solidarity and social security are getting established where these were formerly largely absent.10 With the stark opposition between them, the reliance on traditional forms of solidarity and rights-based approaches constitute two dierent paths of restructuring. The shapes that the newly emerging social security regimes would take might depend more on the ability of political actors in coming up with proposals that would forge new coalitions, and less on the given set of inherited institutions with their crumbling privilege orders. This formulation is undoubtedly relevant to the case of Turkey. The challenges that are forwarded to the current social security system by Turkeys integration into

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the global market cannot simply be explained by the retreat of the state and the expansion of the market. The need to replace the former system which is being dismantled with new mechanisms of social protection is on the political agenda, and it goes unchallenged that the state would play a role in the social arena. The role that the state currently plays, however, places it in the picture as a partner with philanthropists as it tends to follow philanthropic civil society initiatives logic of action rather than that of taxation and redistribution. Nonetheless, the model of social solidarity this model of welfare governance represents does not go unchallenged.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the changes that were taking place in the social security regimes that pertained to post-war Western Europe also found a reection in the rise of a new social security regime in Turkey. Alongside the transition to a multiparty regime after the war, a social security regime was also implanted. In the beginning, this social security regime was composed of two organizations providing combined old age and health benets to civil servants _ (Emekli Sand Civil Servants Retirement Chest) and blue collar workers (Isci g Sigortalar Kurumu Workers Insurance Organization). In the 1960s, the Workers Insurance Organization was reorganized as the Social Security Organization (SSK). Yet, even when the coverage of these two institutions were combined, only a small segment of the society was integrated into the formal social security system and only a small percentage of the working class was covered. During the 1970s, a third social security organization, Bag-Kur, was established to incorporate the self-employed, the peasants and the farmers. However, these groups inability to pay the premiums has often curtailed their access to social benets.11 With its inegalitarian Bismarckian corporatist bent, the system was certainly not responsive to all citizens but only to those who could work. Social benets, which accrued to a small segment, closely represented the status dierentials as these pertained to the occupational dierentials within the labour force. To illustrate the nature of this problem with a straightforward example, for the year 2004, the health benets that accrued to persons covered by the Social Security Organization was US$172 per person, for the self-employed covered by Bag-Kur it was $279 per person, and for those who were covered by the Civil Servants Retirement Chest it was $363 per person.12 Besides, the system was also patriarchal and assumed that women who do not work ought to be covered by the benets that are earned either by their husbands or their fathers.13 Certainly this patriarchal mentality, as well as the anti-egalitarian corporatist bent, were integral to the Bismarckian model itself.14 However, an even more exclusionary outcome of the Bismarckian corporatist model emerged in contexts where the informal sector was signicantly large. This problem pertained to the Southern European welfare regime15 in general, and it was particularly signicant in the Turkish case.16 The result was the rise of a fragmented social citizenship regime which led to the creation of two types of relationship with the state on the basis of social security. In the fragmented citizenship regime that was formed as a result of applying disparate social security policies over the working population, the rst citizenship

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status applied to those who were formally covered by social security. Remarkable dierences among the types of coverage that are provided by the three social security institutions aside, the formally covered citizens relationships to the state were dened by the social benets they received. A second type of relationship with the state emerged with those who were expected to rely solely on family ties and informal networks of social solidarity when they required support due to old age, illness, unemployment and poverty. There, the state again contributed to the livelihood of the individuals, but this time mainly through formalized agricultural support policies, and by providing informal access to urban public land or land without proper building permits. Agricultural support policies helped to sustain small peasant agriculture, prevented a rapid dissolution of the agrarian structures, and kept ruralurban migration under control. Even in case of migration to urban areas, those who had land in rural areas as well as relatives who stayed in the village of origin could benet from multiple strategies of survival, combining the rural means of livelihood with the income generated in the city. In the city, the gecekondu, the Turkish version of irregular settlements that were periodically regularized through the provision of municipal services and title deeds, replaced a proper social housing policy and appeared as an important informal component of the countrys social security regime. At the same time, the possibility of nding employment in state economic enterprises, or in the protected and regulated private sector was not altogether insignicant.17

In the post-1980 period, after the full integration of Turkey in the global market economy through a series of market-oriented policies, the mechanisms that thus far helped to keep poverty under control all came under pressure. With trade liberalization, as well as with the declining state subsidies to agriculture, it became increasingly dicult to sustain small peasant holdings. Urbanization began to lead to a real rupture with the countryside. This was accompanied by a weakening of the extended family ties, which were dicult to sustain in the context of the urban life in a market society. At the same time, the rules of the market have extended to urban landed property relations and made the irregular settlements, which rested upon a violation of the legal basis of private property, unsustainable. In the setting of the emerging market economy, maintaining budgetary discipline became important, and this fact rendered employment creation in the public sector increasingly dicult. Private enterprises had to function according to the dictates of the market and since exible production practices were now the norm, security of employment was seriously undermined. Long-term stable jobs at decent wages became dicult to nd for the entire workforce.18 In the meantime, an expanding portion of society that was already without social security was also losing the informal support it used to rely on. Under these circumstances, a new form of solidarity asserted itself during the 1980s. While reversing poverty was now a dimmer possibility, a new type of urban poor had been generated whose relationship to the state needed to be dened.19 In response to this need, in 1986 a formal institution, The Fund for the Encouragement of Social Cooperation and Solidarity (Social Solidarity Fund) was established to provide means-tested social assistance to the poor. The

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objective of the law was stated as follows: Supporting social cooperation and social solidarity is helping those citizens who are in need, and helping those who have come to Turkey for whichever reason, and distributing incomes fairly in order to institute social justice.20 This statement gives the impression that a transformation towards the rise of a new citizenship regime is about to be launched transforming the states relationship with the working, the unemployed and the immigrant poor into a formal and institutional relationship. This possibility, if realized, could have resulted in the rise of a new solidarity regime. However, the part of the statement which refers to supporting social cooperation and social solidarity contained a hint about what is to follow. The preamble underlines the relationship of the new law with the traditional institutions and explains that the relationship it aims to support would be the charity relationship: Islamic foundations, which are the most ancient and persistent institutions of the Islamic Turkish civilization of Anatolia and the most beautiful examples of cooperation and solidarity, are the most progressive institution of our times in fullling social, economic and cultural needs. . . . The honor to serve the portion of society that is placed under the middle classes and who are without social security would be possible through the support of the charitable and self-sacricing citizens alongside our state.21 The law on Social Cooperation and Solidarity, which was meant to become eective through the local foundations did not play a signicant role in the ght against poverty during the period when the Motherland Party (ANAP) of Turgut Ozal was in power. The successive ANAP governments failed to envision the Social Solidarity Fund as a modern institution that would generate social support through formal social security measures, and could not succeed in utilizing the funds to generate political support either. Thus the fund proved to be ineective in playing a determinant role in the relationship between the state and the citizens. Much later, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) was to become the party that would tap into this potential. The 1990s witnessed yet another development with respect to the status of the poor. This had to do with the introduction of the Green Card scheme for the benet of the poor who were without access to state subsidized health services. On the one hand, the Green Card provision relied on means-testing, and the take-up rate remained low because of the complexity of the bureaucratic procedures of application. On the other hand, this was nevertheless a step toward the recognition of access to health services as a right, which could now be exercised by anyone who fullled the conditions cited by the means-testing. Besides, the True Path Party (DYP) representatives who were in power at the time declared that means-testing was a temporary measure, and that a universal health insurance was under way.22 The realization of universal healthcare as a social right would have created fertile ground for the transformation of the existing citizenship regime. The newly emerging social assistance system gained a novel signicance after the earthquake in 1999 and the economic crisis that ensued. The Fund was elevated to a

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status that it did not have before. After the earthquake in the Marmara region, a grant that was sent by the World Bank was distributed through the Social Solidarity Fund, and the World Bank representatives were satised with the way things worked out. The earthquake fund set a precedent, and the nancial resources that were provided by the Bank after the economic crisis of 2001 as part of the Conditional Cash Transfers were also delegated to the Fund to be distributed.23 When the AKP came to power, the Fund was turned into a directorate (General Directorate of Social Solidarity) in 2004 and continued to play a signicant role in providing social support. The rst AKP government (200207) took quite a few signicant steps in the realm of social assistance. The coverage of the Green Card was expanded, with improved access to health benets, and conditional cash transfers to poor families based on both the childrens school attendance and vaccination records, and payable to the female head of the household, were introduced.24 These measures most probably had a positive impact on the votes that the governing AKP received in the East and Southeast Anatolia where poverty levels are extreme. During the rst AKP government, Turkeys social policy environment was characterized by the coexistence of two tendencies acting in opposite directions. On the one hand, the need for a systematic approach to poverty alleviation through redistributive channels was acknowledged and the steps taken in this direction were shaped by Turkeys relations with the EU. In 2004, the European Commission formally accepted Turkey as a candidate to full membership, and in 2005 the preparation of a Joint Inclusion Memorandum became the rst step towards the countrys incorporation into social policy processes at the European level. Combatting poverty and social exclusion have unambiguously appeared as matters that concerned the political authority. On the other hand, with its rm belief in the unregulated market economy as well as with its socially conservative outlook, the government seemed to be more inclined to prefer traditional forms of solidarity to redistributive social policy. The progress towards the introduction of rights-based social assistance was checked by counterdevelopments undermining the pull for state action. The centrality of the family and the social networks to AKPs approach to social policy could be clearly seen in the recent changes within the Social Services and Child Protection Agency25 and in the party and government programmes as well as in public speeches of the prime minister. The rst AKP government programme stated that If Turkish society is still intact after so many severe problems it has recently experienced, we owe it to our strong family structure26 and asserted that the government would prioritize familyoriented policies. These mechanisms were discussed in the party programme and involved the incentives that are designed to reinforce the role of the family in the rehabilitation of the street children and in the care of the elderly.27 At a later stage, the government introduced mechanisms which support family care for the disabled, and rendered the latter dependent on their relatives. Where the family appeared unable to face the challenge of new forms of poverty and social exclusion, the AKP government was especially well placed to motivate and mobilize the civil initiatives in providing social assistance. The AKP, with its roots in the Islamist National Outlook movement, could use the discourse of Islamic philanthropy better than any other political actor in a way to link local traditions

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with the prevailing trends in the international social policy environment. The emphasis placed on the role of NGOs in dealing with poverty and the blurring of the boundaries between the activities of voluntary associations, central government agencies, municipalities, and the party28 seemed to be in conformity not only with the traditions of Islamic charity but also with the global social policy environment. One should not, therefore, exaggerate the specicity of Islams role in the current social policy developments in Turkey. In fact, religion almost invariably appears as a signicant aspect of civil society initiatives in poverty alleviation in Muslim as well as non-Muslim societies. In a dierent vein, it is possible to observe that in Turkey all through the Republican era, including the single party period (192346) characterized by its ardent secularism, philanthropic associations have been assigned a central role in the attempts to combat poverty.29 In other words, the signicance of the Islamist roots of the AKP lies less in the traditions of Islamic charity and more in the ability of this party to frame an essentially conservative social policy orientation in familiar cultural terms and institutional references which are not at all at odds with the current global order. This comparative advantage that the AKP had in the Turkish political scene might not be important within a rights-based redistributive policy orientation but it could be fully utilized in an alternative solidarity model articulated within the parameters of the neoliberal market economy. This model appears to be particularly strong in a context where religiously motivated civil society associations have recently become very salient in many dierent areas of economic and social life. For example, the umbrella organization TGTV (Turkish Foundation of Voluntary Organizations) now brings together about 100 NGOs that use religious references in their organizational strategy.30 Along with strictly philanthropic associations, these NGOs include business associations and think tanks which also engage in charitable activities. Civil society involvement in welfare provision extends to diverse forms of collaboration with the state through dierent mechanisms which include the presence of philanthropists in the boards of trustees of local foundations under the General Directorate of Social Solidarity and the social funds of municipalities that collect contributions in the form of money and goods from local companies, a gesture which might well be reciprocated in the form of privileges accorded to these companies in their business-related interactions with the local political authorities. Like these donations, the distribution of assistance, both by municipalities and by the local branches of the central welfare administration, lacks transparency. There is no systematic mechanism of means-testing, and targeting is largely discretionary. The assistance is irregular and, with the prominent exception of microcredit, often in kind. As such, the whole system operates in a way which undermines the dierence between public assistance and voluntary benevolance, with the distribution of public funds also conforming to the logic of charity. This model of welfare provision could easily accommodate the dominant institutional mechanisms of the global social policy environment, such as the microcredit schemes which several Turkish government authorities have praised as the best approach to poverty alleviation.31 The central message was that the public transfers only aggravate poverty by reducing work incentives and create dependence on the state; but encouraging entrepreneurship among the poor could enable them to sustain themselves and overcome poverty. Encouraging entrepreneurship among the

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poor has been accepted as an important component of the eorts to combat poverty in a social context where the rate of poverty is much higher than the national average among the self-employed. Hence, apart from the Grameen Bank model introduced in the poor Southeastern region by an NGO run by an AKP-aliated politician,32 we have witnessed the proliferation of microcredit schemes implemented by the government or voluntary organizations, or in partnerships between the two. In the provision of microcredit, as of social assistance in general, philanthropy has become an important part of social policy environment.33 Until recently, the organized groups formally included in the social security regime remained indierent to these developments in the realm of social assistance and did not take a position in favour of the introduction of a rights-based income support policy. They only reacted to the social policy orientation of the AKP government to resist the diminishing of their already granted (or won) rights,34 which was in and of itself a legitimate basis for resistance. Under a democratic regime, it would be dicult for the political authority to withstand that type of popular dissent. But the AKP goverment did handle the popular resistance relatively easily. It is plausible to suggest that one reason for this lack of diculty on the part of AKP can be found in the support it enjoyed elsewhere. AKP increasingly relied on the support of those who were excluded from the formal social security regime. The fact that there was a signicant portion in society that did not enjoy right-based relations with the state and that this excluded portion depended on the arbitrary support generated through charity provided by the government weakened the legitimacy, the voice and the representativeness claims that could have been generated by the resistance of the organized sector. This state of aairs had other political implications as well. Since the existing mechanisms of social assistance are inimical to the codication of social services and support as social rights, they reinforce the traditional clientelistic forms or patronage of the political relationship between the state and the citizens in Turkey. In this regard, two incidents were particularly signicant in generating a public consciousness about the implications of the existing political economy of charity. One of these incidents took place before the municipal elections of 2009 when inkind assistance distributed to the poor by the Social Solidarity Foundations dramatically increased in quantity35 and changed in content, validating those who accusing the government of bribing the voters. In a poor Eastern town where conservative parties have historically had little chance in elections, the local welfare administrators began to distribute consumer durables as social assistance to the poor, and the autonomous board supervising the electoral process intervened to stop the practice. Nevertheless, the decision of the board was not heeded by the provincial governor and he was supported by the prime minister.36 In fact, the Turkish public already had an idea about the dimensions of the political economy of charity and its potential contribution to economic and political interests through another incident which involved an NGO that has been particularly prominent in the eld of assistance to the poor, namely, Deniz Feneri, or the Lighthouse. It emerged from a television programme on poverty and charity on the privately owned Channel 7, which has an Islamic political outlook. These names also appeared in a big legal scandal that erupted in Germany and ended with several prison sentences for the administrators of a charity organization called the

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Lighthouse and a television channel called Channel 7, both based in Germany and informally aliated with their Turkish counterparts. The scandal involved the use of substantial donations from Muslim residents in Germany in irregular ways to serve economic and political interests in Islamist circles, which were said to extend to some prominent AKP members. There is currently a court case on this matter going on in Turkey, with hearings closed to the public. Irrespective of how the court case in Turkey ends, the scandal has made an impact on the public perception of poverty alleviation through charity. In tandem with these developments, a change occurred in the discourse of the opposition groups in the political public sphere and in civil society. These groups began to generalize their rights claims to include the groups which were thus far excluded from the formal social security regime. Prominent actors of especially the left wing opposition began to refer explicitly to social rights, while previously their demands were limited to protecting the acquired privileges of civil servants and the formally employed workers. As the opposition began to generalize their demands to other formerly excluded groups, not only did the discourse of acquired privileges dissolve and the demands begin to be asserted in the form of social rights, but also the scope of demands was expanded to address the needs of all socially marginalized groups. In this regard, it is signicant that the CHP (Republican Peoples Party) the main opposition party, proposed a nationwide guaranteed minimum income scheme (aile sigortasi) which is now being widely debated in the public sphere.37 Perhaps more signicant is the prominence of social rights in the draft constitution prepared by the Confederation of Socialist Trade Unions (DISK).38 The section on basic rights starts o by making a reference to the indivisibility of civil, political,social, economic and cultural rights and asserts that it would treat these as complementary and interdependent. The labour union rights are dened not only as the rights of those who work, but it is emphasized that those who are about to enter the workforce, those who are outside, and who are left outside, all those parties who are in a position to want and to need the protection and advancement of the rights and interests of the workforce must be placed in a legal position, or must be granted the ability to exercise, labor union rights.39 Their reference to protection from poverty and social exclusion as a new generation of social right and the emphasis on the fact that this social right has been recently ratied by the European Council and European Union is noteworthy as well. The section on social rights outlines the measures that must be taken to prevent discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation and old age. Positive discrimination to equalize the status of certain groups, such as women, is identied as a necessary mechanism for realizing social rights for historically disadvantaged groups. Health and education are dened as services that enable persons to fully utilize their human rights and thus, the draft emphasizes, the provision of these services cannot be privatized. The section on economic, social and cultural rights sums up its arguments by listing thirty-seven rights that the authors of the draft would like to see in the new constitution.40 The list reects up-to-date denitions and the contemporary scope of social rights that are ratied as law in other parts of the world. It covers the social services that should be rendered exercisable not only by the working sectors of the male population, but by working women and housewives, immigrants, and the

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disabled, the children, the old, and those who are socially marginalized or excluded for one reason or another. If the fact that the draft has been prepared by a labour union is taken into consideration, then the shift from economism and formal employment to social and universal inclusion of all on the basis of rights and the eorts of the authors to cover both redistributive and recognition-based grievances would appear even more striking. Prominent among other groups that are strongly critical of the socially conservative orientation of government policy is the platform of womens orga_ nizations (Kadn Emei ve Istihdam Giris imi Initiative for Female Labor and g Employment KEIG 2009).41 Their criticism of the care at home model is also shared by a platform that articulates the demands of the disabled. The way the head of this platform, Engelliler.biz, voiced his criticism of the current government policy toward the disabled. It is worth quoting at length because it highlights the contrast between the dierent perceptions on assisting the disadvantaged that currently prevail in Turkey: From the perspective of the disabled, an autonomous life means to be equal with every one . . . there is a proverb in Turkish . . . which says that The hand that gives is loftier than the hand which receives, [but] for the disabled the autonomous life means not to be instrumentalized by the lofty ones that are referred here. [Autonomous life] is living without having to rely on anyone, not becoming the aggrandizing mirror that the other would use to get rid of his complexes, living, without becoming the object with which others satisfy themselves. It is to be respected, to be an individual, to be free. Charity, . . . means unconditional help based on goodness, on religious or moral duty, or on custom and tradition; right, on the other hand, refers to the reciprocal trust relationship between the citizen and the state. . . . charity is the lofty hand that gives, while right is the existence of a social state so that nobody would be turned into a receiving hand.42 This article sought to show that globalization of economic activity and the expansion of the logic of market society have generated two types of responses in Turkey. While the constituencies in mature welfare states respond to the pressure exerted by neoliberalism through their resistance and defence of their acquired rights, in eclectic cases where the Bismarckian dual status model was prevalent alongside a large informal sector, as in Turkey, the bifurcation of the response and the diversication of the political agendas would also be anticipated. The organized sector in Turkeys dual social security regime thus far came to enjoy not social rights, that are by denition universally applicable within the territory, but privileges that accrued to a small percentage of a formally employed minority whose benets are now eroding, thanks to the pressure exerted by the neoliberal government which realized in its second term that it would rather deal with the problem of social support through charity. Informally employed and formerly excluded sectors nevertheless had a relationship with the state under the former social security regime. These groups relied on clientelistic relations with the political authorities, enjoyed arbitrarily

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distributed opportunities and social assistance mostly in kind, and when philanthropy was insucient or was not forthcoming, they were expected to fall back on kinship ties to survive. When the state recently decided to overhaul the social rights of the organized sector, it could easily pit one sector whose privileges it was abolishing against the other that it continued to support through assistance in kind, clientelism and charity activities that were organized by publicprivate partnerships. In other words, the outcomes of the political process began to be determined against social rights largely due to the existence of two types of social citizenship status. Unlike what could have happened as a result of the organized sectors resistance in a horizontally organized democratic society; in Turkey, the formally employed and the informally employed, the old, the poor, the disadvantaged women, and the disadvantaged Kurds and the disabled could be more easily pitted against one another. The fact that the poor, socially marginalized and excluded portions of society did not partake in an equal citizenship status prevented these groups from bringing their forces together to demand social justice in the form of a universal and rights-based social security regime that takes into consideration dierences in the capabilities to exercise rights. This picture is nowadays challenged by many concerned groups. Whether these groups would be able to negotiate the terms that would bring them closer together in their right-based demands and in their opposition to the charity model is yet to be seen. Notes
1. On this point, see B. Palier and M. Claude, From a Frozen Landscape to Structural Reforms: The Sequential Transformation of Bismarckian Welfare Systems, Social Policy and Administration, Vol.41, No.6 (2007), pp.53554. Also see B. Palier and K. Thelen, Institutionalizing Dualism: Complementarities and Change in France and Germany, Politics & Society, Vol.38 (2010), pp.11948. 2. See, for example, P. Pierson, The New Politics of the Welfare State, World Politics, Vol.48, No.2 (1996), pp.14379; J. Pontusson, Once Again a Model: Nordic Social Democracy in a Globalized World, in J. Cronin, G. Ross and J. Shoch (eds.), Futures of the Left (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); C.J. Martin and K. Thelen, The State and Coordinated Capitalism: Contributions of the Public Sector to Social Solidarity in Post-Industrial Societies, World Politics, Vol.60 (Oct. 2007), pp.136. 3. M. Molyneux, The Neoliberal Turn and the New Social Policy in Latin America: How Neoliberal, How New?, Development and Change, Vol.39 No.5 (2008), pp.77597; M. Molyneux, Mothers at the Service of the New Poverty AgendaProgresa/Oportunidases, Mexicos Condition.al Cash Transfer Programme, Social Policy and Administration, Vol.40, No.4 (2006), pp.42549; J. Coatsworth, Prologue: Leveraging Time and Money: Philanthropy and the Social Decit in Latin America, in C. Sanborn and F. Portocarrero (eds.), Philanthropy and Social Change in Latin America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp.vx. I. Gough et al., Insecurity and Welfare Regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America: Social Policy in Development Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); P.B. Townsend and D. Gordon (eds.), World Poverty: New Policies to Defeat an Old Enemy (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2002); and S. Alvarez, Advocating Feminism: The Latin American NGO Boom, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol.1, No.2 (1999), pp.181209. 4. Palier and Thelen, Institutionalizing Dualism, also F. Filgueira, Welfare and Democracy in Latin America: The Development, Crisis and Aftermath of Universal, Dual and Exclusionary Social States, Research Paper, Social Policy and Development Programme Area (Geneva: UNRISD, 2005). 5. M. Daly, Governance and Social Policy, Journal of Social Policy, Vol.32, No.1 (2003), pp.11328. 6. Palier and Martin, From a Frozen Landscape to Structural Reforms, Filgueira Welfare and Democracy in Latin America. 7. K. Polanyi, Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944).

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8. A. Bugra, and K. Agartan, Reading Polanyi for the 21st Century: Market Economy as a Political Project (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). 9. B. Jessop, The Changing Governance of Welfare, Social Policy and Administration, Vol.33, No.4 (1999), pp.34359. I. Bode, Disorganized Welfare Mixes, Journal of European Social Policy, Vol.16, No.3 (2006), pp.34659; World Bank World Development Report 1997 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); C.E. Smidt, Religion as Social Capital: Producing the Common Good (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2003). 10. See, in particular, G. Standing and M. Samson, A Basic Income Grant for South Africa (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2003); and E.M. Suplicy, From the Family Scholarship Program towards the Citizens Basic Income in Brazil, paper presented at the BIEN Congress on Basic Income, Dublin, Ireland, 2008. The last IPSA World Congress of Political Science (July 2009, Santiago, Chile) incorporated a special panel on the Basic Income chaired by Carole Pateman. 11. According to recent estimations, about 20% of the population is without any health insurance coverage including the Green Card scheme that provides means-tested access to health services. See Betam Research Note 039 (Bahcesehir University, 2009); Y. Kart, Turkiyenin en maliyetli sosyal politikasnn zayf ve guclu yanlar [The Green Card: Weaknesses and Strengths of Turkeys Most Expensive Social Policy], http://www.betam.bahcesehir.edu.tr (accessed 8 March 2010). 12. Ankara Ticaret Odas [Ankara Chamber of Trade], Sosyal Gu venlik Raporu [Social Security Report] (2005), http://www.atonet.org.tr/yeni/index.php?p288&l1 (accessed 8 March 2010). 13. A. Klc, The Gender Dimension of Social Policy Reform in Turkey: Towards Equal Citizenship, Social Policy and Administration, Vol.42, No.5 (2008) , pp.487503. 14. G. Esping Andersen, Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity, 1990); and Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 15. M. Ferrera, The Southern Model of Welfare in Social Europe, Journal of European Social Policy, Vol.6, No.1 (1996), pp.1737. 16. I. Gough, Social Assistance in Southern Europe, Southern European Society and Politics, Vol.1, No.1 (1996), pp.123; F.G. Castles, Welfare State Development in Southern Europe, West European Politics, Vol.8 (1995), pp.291313; A. Bugra and C. Keyder, Turkish Welfare Regime in Transformation, Journal of European Social Policy, Vol.16, No.3 (2006), pp.21128. 17. Bugra and Keyder, Turkish Welfare Regime in Transformation. 18. Ibid. 19. In 2007, people who lived below the ocial poverty threshold constituted 18.6% of the population. According to ocial statistics, the incidence of poverty is even higher among casual workers (27%) and the self-employed (23%), see TurkStat [Turkish Statistical Institute] Bulletin (2008), Results of the 2007 Poverty Study, http://www.turkstat.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id2080 (accessed 8 March 2010). 20. Turkey, Ocial Gazette, 14 June 1986. 21. Turkey, Parliament Deb., 454, 16 May 1986, Proposed Law on the Encouragement of Social Cooperation and Solidarity and the Report of the Commission on Plan and Budget. 22. Turkey, Parliament Deb., reunion 84, session 2, 17 June 1992, p.364. 23. Conditional Cash Transfer involves providing monthly social assistance to poor families with children on the condition of regular school attendance and vaccination. The target group has been the poorest 6% of the population. The amount of monthly assistance is also very low. Nevertheless, it has been widely observed that the programme has become successful in ensuring that the girls are sent to school and has helped the poorest section of the society to a certain extent. 24. B. Yakut-Cakar, Turkey, in B. Deacon and P. Stubbs (eds.), Social Policy and International Interventions in South East Europe (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007), pp.10329. 25. B. Yazici, Social Work and Social Exclusion in Turkey: An Overview, New Perspectives on Turkey, No.38 (2008), pp.10734. 26. Oce of the Prime Minister, Directorate General of Press and Information, 18 March 2003, The Programme of the 59th Government, http://www.byegm.gov.tr/icerikdetay.aspx?Id59 (accessed 8 March 2010). 27. Ibid. Also relevant, AKP Party Programme 5.8, 2 Feb. 2007, Family and Social Services, http:// eng.akparti.org.tr/english/partyprogramme.html#5.8 (accessed 8 March 2010). 28. J. White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle: Washington University Press, 2002).

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29. A. Bugra, Poverty and Citizenship: An Overview of the Social Policy Environment in Republican Turkey, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.39 (2007), pp.3352. 30. See, http://www.tgtv.org/web/guest/tgtv-uye-listesi (accessed 25 March 2011). 31. In 2003 two conferences on microcredit were held in ve-star hotels in Istanbul with massive elite participation: the Conference on the Alleviation of Poverty through the Use of Microcredit, organized by the Turkish Foundation for the Reduction of Waste, Istanbul, 910 June 2003 and the Conference on Micronance: Global Experience and Prospects for Turkey, organized by the International Finance Corporation, Turkish Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency and Bankgruppe, Istanbul, 23 Oct. 2003. The opening address by the prime minister at the rst conference and the minister of nance at the second clearly revealed both the prevailing social policy outlook and the place of microcredit within it. 32. Aziz Akgul, member of the parliament from Diyarbakr and the founding director of the Turkish Foundation for the Reduction of Waste (Turkiye Israf Onleme Vakf) 33. A. Bugra and S. Adar, Social Policy Change in Countries Without Mature Welfare States: The Case of Turkey, New Perspectives on Turkey, No.38 (2008), pp.83106. 34. S. Adar, Turkey: Reform in Social Policy, Journal of European Social Policy, Vol.17, No.2 (2007), pp.1678. 35. The statistics that were released after the elections show that the amount of social assistance distributed by the General Directorate of Social Assistance and Solidarity had increased threefold in the pre-election period. 36. The prime minister participated in the debate with a statement which was widely quoted in the media, both critically and with approval: Charity is legitimate in our culture. See Erdoan: Sadaka g kulturumuzde mes rudur [Erdogan: Charity is legitimate in our culture], Milliyet, 2 Jan. 2009, http:// www.milliyet.com.tr/default.aspx?aTypeHaberDetay&ArticleID1041815 (accessed 8 March 2010). 37. The report of the CHP on the new guaranteed minimum income scheme for the family can be accessed at http://www.chp.org.tr/wp-content/upload/ailesigortasi.pdf (accessed 25 March 2011). 38. The Draft Constitution prepared by DISK Kaboglu et al. (1 June 2009), Ozgurlukcu, Es itlikci, _ _ Demokratik ve Sosyal Bir Anayasa Icin Temel Ilkeler (Anayasa Raporu) [Fundamental Principles of a Freedom-generating, Egalitarian, Democratic and Social Constitution (Constitution Report)], http:// www.disk.org.tr/content_images/DiSKanayasa.pdf (accessed 8 March 2010). 39. Ibid., p.45. 40. Ibid., p.53. _ 41. KEIG, Tu g rkiyede Kadn Emei ve Istihdam: Sorun Alanlar ve Politika Onerileri [Female Labour and Employment in Turkey: Problems and Policy Suggestions] (Istanbul: KEIG, 2009). 42. Evde Bakim Hizmeti ve Bagimsiz Yasam [Care At Home Model and Autonomous Life], Bulent Kucukaslan, 15 Oct. 2007, http://bianet.org/bianet/toplum/102304-evde-bakim-hizmeti-ve-bagimsizyasam (accessed 8 March 2010).