The Turkish Context

Abstract

In Chap. 2, we traced the emergence of a new and controversial model of citizenship centered on the market. We turn now to the national case that is the focus of this book, Turkey. The central question of this chapter is whether the transition to a market-based model of citizenship much studied in Europe and North America can be applied to countries like Turkey, typified by late industrialization and a distinct social welfare model. To this end, we consider the evolution of the operational content and context of social and economic citizenship in Turkey. In a final section, we expand the scope of reflection to discuss the situation of migrants, and the evolution of the Turkish “incorporation regime.”

Whether we are looking at policies aimed at permanent legal residents or at recent migrants, we must be careful not to let Turkey’s position “at the edge of Europe,” whether this is understood geographically or institutionally, lead to unexamined assumptions about its policy trajectory. While the circulation of ideas and the emulation of instruments play an important role, we will focus on the dynamic of translation, which implies neither convergence nor recapitulation but rather a process through which ideas coming from outside are combined with already existing practices so as to create new instruments or processes (Campbell 2004: 80). The outcome of translation is different both from the past experience of the system into which new elements are translated and from the external examples that provide the imported elements. Taking, as we will from here on in this book, the perspective of Turkey, we can say that our first chapter focused on defining and contextualizing the “ideas coming from the outside.” In this chapter, the focus shifts to “already existing practices.” Subsequent chapters will provide concrete examples of “new instruments or processes.”

As we consider the Turkish context, we will see that it is not static. Both with respect to social protection and to international migration, the “already existing practices” embodied by Turkish policy instruments are changing and evolving. The image we should retain, thus, is not so much the juxtaposition of two fixed patterns as the (partial) merging of two streams, each in motion and each with an original contribution to make to ultimate outcomes. These outcomes, in the context of our argument, are not limited to economic or political results. We seek to better understand the institutional context for the evolving question of integrating persons at the margins of society into a social and economic system whose government, since the 1980s has increasingly chosen a pro-market approach. By looking in some detail at economic and social policies, in other words, we define the background against which questions of Marshallian “social citizenship” can meaningfully be asked in Turkey.

1 Rich and Poor: From Alms to Social Assistance

We have noted already that the approaches taken by states to economic organization, on the one hand, and social protection, on the other hand, were closely integrated, if not always synchronized. While, the deep institutionalization of social protection models in Europe and North America encouraged the persistence in these areas of market-limiting approaches after these had been largely abandoned in the production sphere, significant albeit incomplete change was evident in the choice of social protection instruments as well. As we turn to the case of Turkey, we must ask the same questions in a different context. We turn first, accordingly, to a brief overview of the overall evolution of the Turkish economy since the founding of the Republic before turning to a more detailed analysis of the changing role of social protection policy and the instruments that embody it.

1.1 The Turkish Economy: From Late Industrialization to State-Led Marketization

The Turkish republic inherited from its Ottoman predecessors the juxtaposition of a largely rural economy with the international trading center of Istanbul. In 1923, the newly installed Kemalist regime ended the hegemony of Istanbul, moving the capital to Ankara and dividing the country into provinces headed by centrally appointed civil servants. Turkey’s economy and population were decreased as a consequence of military conflicts, internal upheaval, and massive population transfers over the period spanning the Balkan Wars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, World War I, and the subsequent War of Liberation. The terms of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, formalized the situation, leaving a country that was smaller and less populated than the late Ottoman state had been.

During the single-party period, from 1923 until 1946 the Kemalist regime pursued a policy of “national developmentalism” similar to that of Latin American states such as Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina (Esen 2014). Centered on self-sufficiency in an environment marked by global depression and world war, Turkey remained a largely agrarian country, despite increasing strains to the rural economy made worse by a drought in 1928. After 1929, the effects of the Great Depression and World War II on the terms of trade of agricultural products put yet more strain on an already weakened economy (Buğra 2007: 39; Oktar and Varlı 2010). The strongly interventionist National Production Law (Milli Koruma Kanunu) was enacted in order to regulate price fluctuations in agriculture and prevent unjust profits. By this regulation, the property of small farmers and merchants engaged in foreign trade or the assets of industrialists could be seized (Oktar and Varlı 2010). Despite these problems, there was little rural-to-urban migration; urban population reached 25% only in 1950 (Buğra 2007: 39).

After the end of the single-party regime in 1946, governments dominated by the Democratic Party continued to give priority to the agriculture sector. The mechanization made possible in large part by Marshall-Plan aid and the more liberal international trade regime of the postwar world encouraged an export-led agricultural strategy. Supported by a coalition of large landowners and small-holding peasants, leading policies of this period included distribution of land (Kepenek and Yentürk 2007: 108), expansion of low-interest credit, and price support through guaranteed state purchases of certain commodities (Öniş and Şenses 2007). Even so, increasing mechanization led to a decline in the need for rural labor and a corresponding incentive for migration toward cities.

A more radical break with the past came after the military coup of 1960, which ushered in a move from a broadly liberal policy centered on agricultural exports to a protectionist regime focused on import substitution industrialization policies. A period of planned development was introduced in which targeted state investment boosted the private sector. Supported by, both, industrialists and labor unions as well as the rapidly expanding state bureaucracy, this policy encouraged the production of consumer goods for domestic consumption (Koray 2008: 143–144). It also witnessed a significant increase in the rural-to-urban migration that had begun after 1950. The oil crisis in the 1970s coincided in Turkey with the limits of import substitution industrialization policy and unstable coalition governments. To deficits in the current account balance were added budget deficits, and increase in both external debt and inflation (Şişman 2017). Economic growth halted and then regressed; public investment declined; increased interest rates prevented the opening of new employment opportunities. A balance-of-payments crisis from 1977 to 1980 triggered an IMF-imposed structural adjustment program aimed at reducing state spending on subsidies. By the late 1970s, a renewed turn toward an open economy was underway (Bozkurt-Güngen 2018).

The 1980 military coup-d’état hastened the transformation of a system already in transition. Internalizing the spirit of the “Washington consensus,” import substitution was abandoned and the 1980s were dominated by export promotion through subsidies as well as a significant decrease in real cost of labor; formal wages failed to keep up with inflation, and low-wage informal employment was encouraged by the proliferation of small subcontracting firms in sectors such as textile and apparel (Buğra and Keyder 2006: 220). Turkey eliminated controls on foreign capital transactions and declared the convertibility of the Turkish Lira in 1989 (Boratav et al. 2001). The subsequent decade was marked by further pro-market reforms, as Turkey participated in the general enthusiasm for laissez-faire market economics that was at the time hegemonic in much of the world. This experience of unbridled economic liberalization brought results similar to those of contemporary Latin American states, as initially rapid export-led growth foundered on obstacles of domestic inflation, which peaked at over 100% per year in 1994, and remained at double-digit levels until 2003, as well a rapidly devaluing currency whose value went from approximately 80 for US$1 in 1980 to effectively valueless on international markets (over one million to the dollar) before being replaced by the New Lira in 2005.¹

This period was brought to an end by the dual shock of a sharp economic crisis in 2001 and the national electoral victory in November 2002 of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi—hereafter, AKP) representing the modernist wing of the Turkish Islamist movement led by Istanbul mayor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In a world emerging from the hegemony of the Washington consensus, “a modified version of neoliberal economic policies based on strong regulatory institutions and social policies designed to mitigate excessive inequalities,” was acceptable to international partners and politically successful (Öniş 2019: 5).

In the nearly two decades it has held power at the national level, the AKP-led government has embraced an increasingly state-led version of the market economy, shifting from “rolling back” the state to what Peck and Tickell (2002: 37) dubbed “roll-out neoliberalism” and defined as “the purposeful construction and consolidation of neoliberalized state forms, modes of governance, and regulatory relations.” In the Turkish case, this has focused on close links between the state and private investment partners. Large export-oriented firms proved a critical source of political support for the AKP government (Öniş and Şenses 2007). As they became increasingly transnational in its operations there emerged a growing alliance between, on the one hand, a growing group of transnational investors, export-oriented small and medium-sized businessmen and financial interests, and, on the other hand, growing segments of the new regulatory bureaucratic agencies, including institutions such as the Competition Board, Central Bank, and the Bank Regulations and Supervisory Board (Öniş and Şenses 2007: 15). Analysis by the OECD highlights the central role played by schemes such as “priority projects,” “large-scale projects,” and “strategic projects,” which can be supported by a wide array of direct public subsidies and preferential tax treatment (OECD 2018: 40).

This policy achieved a considerable measure of economic stabilization and renewed growth in the years following 2005, including well-above-average performance during the global downturn following 2008. During this period, per-capita levels of income and production were on a trajectory of convergence with the OECD average. Significantly, a number of indicators suggest that this growth was relatively inclusive. Dorlach (2015: 522) points to a growth rate of approximately 5% per year between 2006 and 2011 both for the Turkish economy as a whole and for the bottom 40% of the population. The same analysis, however, points out that, while encouraging growth, recent policies have done little to further redistribution. Taken together, taxes and public transfers in Turkey make one of the smallest contributions of any OECD state to bringing down the nation’s GINI coefficient, which stood at approximately 40 in 2011, down only slightly from the estimate of 42.7 a decade earlier.² Also problematic in this period were high rates of unemployment, which remained over 10% (Yeldan and Ünüvar 2016) as well as persistently high current account deficit.

The elections of June 2011, which constituted the third successive electoral victory for the AKP can be seen as marking a further turn in Turkey’s political economy). Pointing to the international emergence of a “Beijing consensus” of state-led and (politically) nonliberal capitalism, Öniş (2019) suggests that Turkish state capitalism has increasingly taken this path. The balance of power between the state and its private-sector partners has shifted in favor the former as the economy is largely penetrated by the increasingly intermingled apparatuses of the state and the AKP.

Whether attributable to this shift or to broader international trends, it is also notable that the post-2011 period has also witnessed the return of some traditional points of weakness of the Turkish economy, most notably inflation and currency depreciation, with the Turkish Lira losing approximately 75% of its value relative to the Euro between 2012 and 2020.³ This period was also marked by the Gezi Park protests of 2013 and more importantly the failed coup d’état of July 2016. The latter, especially, led to significant institutional transformation toward a more presidential system, institutionalized after the 2018 general elections. There was also a significant turnover in the civil service and in the state’s relations with media, associations, and other private sector bodies as those suspected of participation in or sympathy for the coup were excluded.

For many analysts, this latest period is also marked by a reversal of the Europeanizing trend of Turkish economics and foreign policy (Öniş 2019; Aydın-Düzgit and Kaliber 2016). While there can be no doubt that Turkish accession to the EU is no longer being pursued actively by either side, we must be careful nonetheless in generalizing this point. Relations between Turkey and the EU have always been complex and are increasingly conflictual, but with respect to the policies of interest to this study, be they instruments intended to assist very low income families or the laws and regulations relating to migration and asylum, interaction between Turkey and Europe remains of the first importance. It is with this shifting context in mind that we turn our attention first to the evolution of instruments of social assistance and, in a following section, to Turkey’s immigration regime.

1.2 Social Welfare and Citizenship in Turkey in the Twentieth Century

Going back to the nineteenth century, social welfare in Turkey as in Europe was a matter largely of local concern. Giving alms to the poor was at once a religious duty—in Islam just as in Christianity—and a source of patronage and influence for local notables. A central institution in this context, and one whose legacy is still highly relevant to the contemporary policy discourse, was the vakıf or philanthropic foundation (Buğra 2008). Gradual modernization of this system, again as Europe and North America with the partial exception of social-democratic Scandinavia, led to social policies sharply divided between those aimed primarily at the middle class and those for the benefit of low-income persons. In the case of the former, the evolution of policy from the 1940s to the 1980s resulted in a gradual and partial translation of the elements of industrial citizenship to Turkey, with instruments largely modeled on the “Bismarkian” systems of Western Europe.

The Turkish social security system after World War II (Buğra 2018) was organized according to occupational status and based on three public insurance schemes—the Social Insurance Organization (Sosyal Sigortalar Kurumu, SSK) for formal workers, Civil Servants Retirement Chest (Emekli Sandigi, ES), and the Pension Fund for the Self-Employed (Esnaf, Sanatkarlar ve Diger Bagımsız Olanlar Sigortalar Kurumu, BAĞ-KUR). In 1983, the fund for the self-employed was expanded to include independent peasant producers (Buğra 2018). All of these combined retirement pensions with health insurance. As with the “Bismarckian” systems of Western Europe, these instruments were neither universal nor egalitarian. General tax revenue did not contribute to the financing, which came exclusively from employees and employers.⁴ Unpaid family workers and all participants in the informal sector remained outside of the system (Buğra and Keyder 2006). In an important departure from the Bismarckian model, however, there was no role for autonomous trade unions in the administration of the insurance funds (Yılmaz 2013: 60).

Additional elements of industrial citizenship were introduced following the adoption of the 1961 Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, which included for the first time the idea of the “social state” responsible for the well-being of its citizens. With the five-year development plans implemented from 1963 in the context of the push to import substituting industrialization, economic and social development was linked to the plan, and the duties and responsibilities of the “social state” were made more prominent. The 1963 Law on Trade Unions No. 274 and the Collective Labor Agreement Strike Lockout Act No. 275 recognized the legal right to strike. At the same time, the right to insurance coverage was extended to immediate family of workers (Buğra 2008).

In a first step toward broader coverage, the Law granting a pension to “Needy Powerless and Lonely Turkish Citizens over 65”⁵ came into force in 1976. It provided cash benefits to the elderly and the disabled without relatives to provide for them. Beneficiaries of this scheme remained limited in number due to the conditionality on the absence of relatives. This remained the only means-tested social assistance program until 1992, when a means-tested scheme of health insurance, using the so-called “green card,” was put in place for low-income citizens (Buğra 2018: 321). 

Of far more significance to the welfare of low-income persons prior to the 1990s were state policies for housing and agriculture (Buğra and Adar 2008: 26), which Eder (2010) has labeled “indirect welfarism” and which long succeeded in limiting the extent of “absolute poverty” in rural Turkey rather more effectively than in contemporary Latin America, and in avoiding the appearance of an urban under-class on the British or North American model (Pinarcioğlu and Işik 2008). The second pillar of “indirect welfarism,” which became particularly important as rural-to-urban migration swelled was the systematic toleration of informal urban housing. As noted by Eder (2010: 162), the peculiar feature of informal urban housing in Turkey was that they were largely built on public land, “invaded and appropriated, mostly by the new migrants into the city.” Building and then selling such housing to more recently arrived migrants resulted in what Pinarcioğlu and Işik (2008) have labeled “poverty in turns,” but which might just as well be seen as a clear path to economic upward mobility, at least for early arrivals. Toleration of this practice provided an effective if indirect housing subsidy for urban dwellers, while regular amnesties acted as capital transfers to squatters by transforming them into recognized property owners—a practice whose fading echoes can be seen as recently as 2018 (Ark-Yıldırım 2020).

2 The AKP Government and Reform of Social Policy

Erosion of “indirect welfarism” was evident since the liberal turn of the 1980s, under pressure from the growth of flexible employment, the commercialization of agricultural and urban land and the growing fiscal pressure on the state. This trend accelerated after the arrival to national power of the AKP in 2002. In addition to the direct cost of agricultural subsidies, both policies proved incompatible with the new government’s economic priorities. Product and input subsidies for agriculture, already in decline, were eliminated in the context of IMF-led restructuring after the 2001 budget crisis (Eder 2010: 163). The toleration of informal urban housing, for its part, clashed with the AKP government’s policy of using the urban property market above all as a magnet for investment (Kuyucu 2014). While some former squatters benefitted from the acquisition of rights to the property they occupied (Ark-Yıldırım 2020), it became evident that there would be no toleration of renewed large-scale urban land appropriation—a question to which we will return in our discussion of the fate of Syrian and other forced migrants.

2.1 Market-Compatible Instruments of Social Policy

As it hastened the dismantling of the “indirect welfarism” of past decades, the AKP government moved to introduce new forms of targeted social policy. This was of particular urgency, for a government that counted on the electoral support of a significant portion of the low-income urban population, because the combined effects of the 2001 economic crisis and its own urban transformation policies risked introducing into Turkey urban poverty in the European sense. Taking a broad measure that includes pension and health programs targeted at the middle class, public social spending increased from 3.4% in 1995 to 12.5% of GDP in 2016. While remaining below the OECD average of 20.5% for 2016⁶ this sharp increase is significant; we are not here in a context of “retrenchment.”

A starting point was the unification of the three branches of the social security system and, as of 2006, the addition of a measure of general tax revenue to its funding mix, albeit more modest than the European norm⁷ (Adar 2007). The system was expanded to include citizens, and special access provisions for civil servants were largely eliminated. With respect to healthcare, those with incomes above one-third of the official minimum wage are expected to contribute to the health insurance fund. Below this threshold, the universal health system, which replaced the “green card” after 2008, provides access to healthcare with contributions paid by the government. Furthermore, children under the age of 18 will be covered by the health insurance scheme without having to pay premiums (Yentürk 2018).

This policy mix has been labeled “social neo-liberalism” (Öniş 2012), as pro-market economic policies were combined with significant redistribution, especially in the health and education sectors. Dorlach (2015: 525) expands on this insight by suggesting that the AKP government expanded policies typical of the “productive welfare state,” such as health, education, and active labor market policies (training schemes and public works), while retrenching the “protective welfare state” focused on passive labor market policies (unemployment insurance, workplace regulation, and toleration of labor union activities), agricultural supports and housing subsidies. These latter, significantly, are meant to “shield citizens from or in the market” (530).

At the same time, in a pattern consistent with the model of market citizenship sketched out in the Chap. 2, assistance to the poorest citizens has increased significantly. Among such programs, the social (i.e. noncontributory) pensions for the elderly and disabled, whose modest origins in 1976 we noted above, have been repeatedly expanded and reached some 1.3 million persons in 2018 (Öktem 2018: 29). Also notable are programs aimed at widows, children, or students. Adjusted for inflation, overall spending on means-tested social assistance increased by some 176% in between 2006 and 2017 and accounted for 7.3% of total spending on social protection programs by the end of that period (Yentürk 2018: 49). Marked in detail by a piecemeal approach that has produced a bewildering array of programs (43 as of 2019 by the official count of the Ministry of Family, Labor, and Social Services), the pattern that emerges is one of targeted social CT intended to empower low-income citizens to act within the market, making choices and accepting risk.

In terms of governance, these programs are coordinated and implemented by the Directorate General for Social Assistance (Sosyal Yardımlar Genel Müdürlüğü). This institution was established in 2004, under the name The Directorate General for Social Assistance and Solidarity, within the precursor of the present Ministry of Family, Labor, and Services. The financial resources for these programs come from several sources. As of 2020, eight of these programs are funded by the state’s general budget, 2 by the European Union, and the rest by the Fund for the encouragement of the social assistance and solidarity, whose operation is detailed in the following section (MoFLSS 2019). As of 2019, these programs collectively, reached some 3.3 million households and accounted for spending equivalent to 1.2% of Turkey’s GDP (Ministry of Family and Social Policies 2017: 136). While the sums transferred to a given beneficiary have always been modest, Öktem (2018) has estimated that their value in terms of purchasing power had stayed roughly constant through 2018.

Two national-level instruments were developed to manage this array of programs. Launched in 2010, the Integrated Social Assistance Information System (ISAIS) is a database and online management system that aggregates data from 22 public institutions and 112 web-based services, and makes it available to all public agencies involved in administering social support policies. These data are used to assess eligibility, disburse funds, and carry out audits for an array of national programs (MFSP 2017). In 2013, the PTT card, a multipurpose smart card, was developed as a common vehicle for user to access these programs. It can be used to withdraw cash, or directly for purchases in shops equipped with POS terminals. As of 2018, over 2 million Turkish citizens used this card (MoLFSS 2019: 150).

2.2 Persisting Centrality of the Local Level

From the perspective of this book, the relevant question concerning these examples of market-enhancing social policy relate less to their aggregate scope than to their impact on beneficiaries. Do they contribute, even incrementally, to creating or enhancing social citizenship, in the sense of “basic equality of membership” in a broader society? At the macro level, a number of elements suggest caution. Basing his calculation on the European Union’s “at risk of poverty threshold,” Öktem (2018: 62) concludes that, with the notable exception of some programs aimed at the severely disabled, the sums transferred are insufficient to lift beneficiaries out of poverty. Looking to program design, critical analysts have pointed out the fragmented nature of these programs and the often arbitrary definitions of eligibility perpetuate a logic of discretionary charity rather than of stable social rights (Buğra 2015), and do not include “a guaranteed minimum income policy in conformity with an the logic of citizenship” (Buğra 2018: 323), while others (Bahçe and Köse 2017) have chosen to define the increase in social transfer payments as an instrument of “pauperization” of the working class.

While significant, however, these elements do not directly address our central question. Returning as ever to T.H. Marshall, we are reminded that while the membership at the heart of social citizenship undeniably requires securing a “modicum of economic welfare and security,” its purpose is to allow all citizens to “live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society” (Marshall 1950: 11). To determine whether and to what extent social CT programs contribute to this ideal in the context of the standards prevailing in a market-centered society, we suggest that it is necessary to ascertain how the citizens in question feel about it. For this reason, as set out in the introduction to this book, our initial empirical studies are situated at the local level, looking at cases in which means-tested programs of social CT using digital smart cards have explicitly replaced in-kind distribution. Doing this allows us to work on a manageable scale, and also to focus our analysis on the means of assistance—cash versus in-kind—rather than its quantity.

While we propose that this shift to the local level provides useful analytical clarity, it requires us to complement the global picture of the evolution of Turkish social policy given so far with an additional element of “already existing practices” (Campbell 2004), namely, the quite considerable institutional capacities for social assistance found in Turkey at the district level. The district is both a unit of government, with an elected assembly and mayor, and an administrative unit of the national state. Several districts typically make up a province, with the province taking the name of the largest city within it.⁸ For “metropolitan cities” such as Ankara or Istanbul, which comprise regions all by themselves, districts can be thought of as largely self-governing urban boroughs.

The role of district municipalities in social assistance has gained importance since the mid-1990s. In the municipalities under its control, the Welfare Party—precursor to today’s AKP—invested heavily in social provision such as direct programs to distribute food, coal, and clothing (Akinci 1999). Municipal initiatives gained further momentum after the AKP came to national power in 2002. Particularly important in our context was the municipal law of 2005,⁹ which introduced the possibility of partnerships for poor-relief activities with the private sector and philanthropic NGOs and of cooperating with the private sector in meting out social assistance. Within the framework of their own social assistance activities, this law allows municipalities to supplement their budgets with private donations (art. 59) as well as to employ volunteer workers (art. 75–77). With these new powers, some municipalities have been able to set up local social funds partly financed by contributions in cash or in kind made by local companies or charities, allowing them a considerable degree of autonomy in this area vis-à-vis the national authorities. The district municipality of U, which will provide one of the case studies of Chap. 4, is among those that initiated such an instrument. The reinforcement of central authority noted in the previous section has had an impact in this area as well. The Investment Monitoring and Coordination Presidency (Yatırım İzleme ve Koordinasyon Başkanlığı) was established in 2016 with authority to intervene in cases that “negatively affect the health, peace, well-being, public order, and security.” A 2018 presidential decree¹⁰ further stipulated that municipalities must notify the Ministry of Treasury and Finance of their monthly budgets and can implement their programs only after approval by the Ministry.

A second, and more complex, institutional actor present at the district level is comprised of the national-level “Fund for the Encouragement of Social Cooperation and Solidarity” (Sosyal Yardımlaşma ve Dayanışmayı Teşvik Fonu—hereafter, Solidarity Fund) and the district-level “Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundations” (hereafter SASFs) associated with it. We will encounter the SASF in one of our local cases, but also in the context of assistance to Syrian refugees. Created in 1986 to assist persons outside the formal social security system, the Solidarity Fund was significantly expanded by the AKP government after 2002. The 1986 legislation set up the Fund as an “umbrella organization,” potentially available as a source of financing for diverse social initiatives (Göçmen 2014: 98). The fund gained importance after the Marmara earthquake of 1999, when it managed a World Bank grant for reconstruction. After the economic crisis of 2001, conditional cash transfer (CT) aids provided by the World Bank were also distributed via the Fund (Buğra and Candaş 2011). In 2004, it was organized institutionally under “The Prime Ministry General Directorate of Social Assistance and Solidarity.” Responsibility was subsequently shifted to the Ministry of Family, Labor, and Social Services. The Solidarity Fund’s resources are diverse, funding sources include 2.8% of total income and corporate tax collection, 50% of the budget from traffic fines, and 15% of the revenue of the radio and television supreme council.¹¹ In principle, it can also accept private charitable contributions, but Öktem and Erdoğan (2018: 21–22) calculate from data that they acknowledge to be imperfect that these are probably negligible, below 1% of the Solidarity Fund’s annual budget.

The fund is led by a Board of Governors chaired by The Minister of Family, Labor, and Social Services. Also participating are representatives of the Prime minister and of the ministries of Interior, Finance, and Health, as well as the General Directorate of Social Assistance and the General Director of Foundations. CT forms an important and growing part of social assistance, accounting for 67.4% of total social assistance transfers in 2017,¹² 86% in 2018, and 93% in 2019 (Ministry of family report 2019). While the remainder still consists largely of in-kind distribution, public authorities increasingly are finding new ways to monetize aid to the poor.

The General Directorate conducts all its relations with citizens through 1,003 local Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundations (SASFs) whose function is to provide social assistance to vulnerable and needy persons. While social assistance programs are designed centrally, they are implemented through the SASFs. Although these, like autonomous religious or charitable bodies, are legally included in the category of “foundation,” they cannot be categorized as NGOs but are more appropriately considered parastatal (Öktem 2018), because they are established by law and district governors serve as the chairman of their boards of trustees empowered to make their own decisions (Yılmaz and Yakut Çakar 2008: 3). As seen from the center, this structure takes advantage of local knowledge.¹³ Working with the SASFs, from this perspective, ensures flexibility and speed and also a measure of enhanced control since SASF staff is contractual and can be kept or removed according to performance.

As summarized by Aytaç (2013: 1218, 1234) each SASF has a board of trustees headed by the district governor. In urban areas the committees have 14 members, of which 7 are centrally appointed local civil servants, 3 are elected neighborhood head men (muhtar), 2 are representatives from local nongovernmental organizations, and 2 are local philanthropists. As set out in a 2017 synthesis document prepared by a team of experts from the Ministry of Family and Social Policy and the World Bank (MFSP 2017), the executive committee serves as a critical link between national and local sources of information. Participation in means-tested social assistance programs is not automatic: potential beneficiaries must take the initiative. Those desiring assistance apply to their local SASF by completing a questionnaire that is cross-referenced with information available through the ISAIS to establish an income estimate, and then combine this with other variables such as demographic and geographic data to compute a “poverty score.” This, in turn, is compared with local cost-of-living estimates to determine whether or not an applicant is below the “poverty threshold” for their place of residence (MFSP 2017: 28). Eligibility is confirmed by an on-site visit of SASF staff whose task is to assess actual living conditions, including an estimate of the value or real and other property so as to determine “income status” on a scale of 1 (very poor) to 5 (well-off). Information derived from inspections, in turn, is uploaded to the ISAIS. A decision is then made by the executive committee based on the sum of this information.

The effective discretion left to the executive committee remains an open question. Writing in 2013, Aytaç concluded that the committee is formally bound neither by the computer-generated scores nor by the reports of its inspectors. He noted its “authority to override certain formal eligibility requirements for enrollment, and /…/ enroll individuals who are formally not eligible but are considered needy” (Aytaç 2013: 1218). Our observations, carried out in 2019, showed less discretion with respect to national social programs. In the case of aid to forced migrants, the discretion allowed the executive committees is greater, as we will discuss in Chap. 6. Beyond the question of discretion, however, it is evident even from formal descriptions that the system depends for its effectiveness on the accuracy of the data supplied to it. This is a question, particularly with respect to the reliability of on-site inspection, to which we will return with respect both to domestic programs and to programs for migrants.

2.3 Does Cash Transfer Contribute to Market Citizenship? Avoiding False Comparisons

Significantly, the symbolic legitimating reference for the Solidarity Fund and the district SASF’s is not to a twentieth-century Western model but rather to Ottoman history. The preamble of the law that established the fund stated that:

Islamic foundations, the most ancient and persistent institutions of the Islamic Turkish Anatolian civilization and the most beautiful examples of cooperation and solidarity for a thousand years, are the most progressive institution of our times in fulfilling social, economic and cultural needs.

… The honor of serving the part 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-sacrificing citizens alongside with our state. ¹⁴

The role of diverse actors was further strengthened in the 1980s and afterward by the increasing number of religiously motivated associations in the field of social aid distribution (Göçmen 2014) as well as the increasing role of municipal governments in that field, as noted above. Implementing this policy required making changes to municipal and tax legislation. Government allowed tax exemption from individual or firms who give money to NGOs engaged in food banking activities, and tax reduction from individual or firms who give the money to NGOs engaged in activity to alleviate poverty.¹⁵ According to Buğra and Adar (2008: 103), this empowered role of nonstate actors, which “implies a change in the content of social rights, which come to be defined outside the formal boundaries of the citizenship relation.”

In the context that we have established for this book, two points of caution should be evident. In the first place, we must be careful to avoid confusing political rhetoric with effective policy. The glorification of private benevolence should be tempered evidence (Öktem and Erdoğan 2018: 21–22) of the limited budgetary impact of private donations. To the extent that private actors are indeed playing a larger role, moreover, what may at first seem like a peculiarly Turkish debate should be seen as part of the much broader discussion of the appropriate boundary between public and private in the provision of social assistance. Noting that “a hybrid combination of public and private funds for the provision of social welfare services played a crucial role in the social, cultural and economic life of the Turkic world from the 8th to the 19th century” Göçmen (2014: 95) emphasizes that “the idea of introducing a social-assistance institution modeled on vakıfs is significant for two reasons: it is based on Islamic principles and it emphasizes citizens’ duty to care for the poor.” In the second of these, we find a clear echo of the injunction that citizenship involves “accepting responsibility for others.” But what of the first?

The explicitly religious reference has been made much of by both sympathetic and critical observers (Öktem and Erdoğan 2018). It may be tempting to contrast this with twentieth-century welfare state ideology, which emphasized a shift in responsibility for social care away from religious authorities toward the secular state. We must avoid, however, the logical fallacy of comparing theory and practice as if they were the same thing. As we have seen, the ideology of state monopoly was at best imperfectly reflected in European and North American practice—and the quasi-public role of faith-based organizations remains important. The resurgence of religious symbolism and even the explicit participation of religious institutions in Turkey, thus, are less surprising—and less “Turkish”—than it might initially seem.

Going beyond the rather sterile debate on the state monopoly of social services, Buğra (2015) suggests that the evolution of the Turkish system hearkens back to a “logic of charity,” the purpose of which is to allow those who are well-off to acquire moral virtue by temporarily relieving the suffering of the poor rather than a concerted effort to address the sources of poverty itself. This is not a criticism that should be dismissed out of hand—and it applies far beyond Turkey. In principle, it constitutes the exact opposite of Leisering’s (2019: 320) “citizenship approach to poverty.” Which of these best characterizes a given situation is an empirical question. It is a point to which we will return in the context of the local examples discussed in Chap. 4, but also in our subsequent discussion of humanitarian assistance.

3 Turks and Others: The Evolving Incorporation Regime

Like its institutions of social support, the Turkish incorporation regime for migrants has undergone significant changes in recent years and continues to evolve. More than in the case of social policy, moreover, recent reforms to Turkish immigration policies bear the marks not just of diffuse policy emulation but of explicit policy transfer from the member states of the European Union, initially in the context of Turkish candidacy for EU membership and more recently due to agreements relating to Syrian and other refugees. As these will be our focus in Chaps. 5 and 6, we go into more detail in the pages that follow about this particular aspect of the Turkish incorporation regime, while providing only a brief outline of policies applied to other types of migrants.

3.1 A Restrictive Regime of Naturalization

Turkish immigration policy emerges from the same history as the economic and social policies we have been considering. Two critical factors, in this context, are the inflow of ethnic Turkish populations in the 1920s and 1930s, and the emigration of Turkish workers and their families to Western Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. From the first of these and from the period of the nationalist revolution and war of Independence more generally, came a theory and practice of nationality akin to Brubaker’s (1992) description of “volk-centered” nationalism in Germany, in which the status of citizen was closely tied to ethnic identity. The experience of the 1950s and 1960s reinforced the notion that Turkey was a country characterized by surplus labor. How to employ this was a challenge to which first import substitution and emigration, and subsequently export promotion were proposed as responses, but the perceived need for imported labor that Nuhoğlu Soysal (1994) points to as central in shaping the “incorporation regimes” of Western Europe has no equivalent here.

In this context, immigration policy focused on assimilation, with the only groups allowed by right to settle permanently in Turkey being those of Turkish cultural or linguistic origin (İçduygu and Aksel 2013). The acquisition of Turkish nationality was largely limited to persons of Turkish ethnicity and heritage and Sunni Muslim religion.¹⁶ Change began with a 2003 law granting Turkish citizenship after three years of marriage to a Turkish citizen. Further reforms in 2009 granted citizenship to stateless children born in Turkey if they are unable to acquire their parents’ citizenship (Koser Akcapar and Simsek 2018).¹⁷ A 2010 implementation decision also made provision for naturalization after five years of uninterrupted residence in Turkey, allowed citizenship for those who owned real property, made investments, transferred their permanent workplace, or completed their education in Turkey. In each case, however, citizenship was not automatic; an application must be made in the prefecture of residence, and applicants must prove that they have sufficient means to provide for themselves and their family.¹⁸ The acquisition of citizenship was also possible under “exceptional circumstances.” At the same time, however, persons with temporary or international protection status—who are at the heart of our discussion in Chaps. 5 and 6—were excluded from the law’s provisions.

Article 12 of the 2009 law made explicit the criteria for “exceptional citizenship,” stating that this applied to persons recognized as migrants under the meaning of pre-existing laws (that is, persons of Turkish cultural or ethnic origin) and also to those who have already contributed and/or have the potential to contribute at an exceptional level to Turkish society in the fields of science, technology economy, social life, sports, culture and arts. To these were added, “persons deemed necessary for naturalization.” Alternatively, a 2016 amendment (number 2016/9601) specified economic conditions that could justify “exceptional status.” As further amended in September 2018,¹⁹ these are:

• Making a permanent capital investment of at least 500.000 USD in Turkey

• Purchasing real property worth at least 250.000 USD and keeping it for at least 3 years

• Providing employment for at least 50 workers; having at least 500.000 USD or equivalent deposits in another currency in Turkish banks, provided there are no withdrawals for at least three years

• Keeping government debt instruments equaling at least 500.000 USD for three years

The acquisition of Turkish nationality through this process is by invitation. It can be initiated only by the government, not the potential beneficiary. Persons whom the government deems to be relevant after an evaluation process, are contacted directly and called for interviews (Koser Akcapar and Simsek 2018).

The legal aspects of Turkish citizenship—what Marshall would have called civic and political citizenship or more contemporary authors would designate as status as distinct from rights—remain difficult to acquire. But what of the elements of social citizenship that have been our focus throughout this volume? A central theme of our argument has been that these can, at least to a limited extent, be seen as decoupled from civic and political citizenship. This allows us to consider in Chap. 4 the possibility that, nationality status notwithstanding, persons unable to meet socially defined basic needs are less than full citizens. The mirror image of this argument allows us to ask whether and to what extent addressing the basic needs of forced migrants, confers on them a limited but significant measure of social citizenship.

3.2 The Evolving Status of Internationally Displaced Persons

The unanticipated and unprecedented population movement caused by the Syrian civil war, which began in earnest in 2011, came at a time when Turkish law and practice with respect to forced migrants was already evolving, and it has led to further rapid change. Turkey initially ratified the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention with both time and geographical limitations to apply only to persons coming from Europe before 1951. While the time limitation was removed by a 1967 Protocol, the geographical limitation was retained. Until 1994, the UNHCR was the only institution responsible for evaluating refugees’ asylum claims and resettling them into third countries in Europe. A first change came with a 1994 regulation, prompted by large-scale movement of Kurds from northern Iraq, allowing for the possibility of granting “temporary asylum” to people from outside of Europe (Sarı and Dinçer 2017: 62). The definition of “asylum seekers” was identical to the 1951 Convention’s definition of refugees, without geographical limitation, but did not give rights, even theoretically, to permanent residence.

More sweeping changes followed the 1999 recognition of Turkey as an EU candidate with the stated intention of bringing Turkish law and practices into closer alignment with those of the European Union (Binder 2014: 83). A critical step in this reform was outlined in the 2003 National Program for the Adoption of the EU Acquis Communautaires, which was followed in 2005 by the National Action Plan for Adoption of the EU Acquis in the Field of Asylum and Immigration and the 2007 Action Plan for Integrated Border Control. Together, these have been seen as marking a “novel, external and technical character of the emergence of migration governance in Turkey” (Üstübici 2019: 59). Implementing the principles contained in these plans took almost a decade, leading ultimately to the Law on Foreigners and International Protection (LFIP) of 4 April 2013.

A central element of the Acquis Communautaires incorporated into the new law alongside the legacy of preexisting Turkish laws and practices noted above, was the provision of wider protection opportunities to migrants. Legal institutions directly inspired by EU law such as “administrative detention,” “accelerated procedure,” and “inadmissible applications,” made their way into Turkish law, along with the notion of Subsidiary protection status (Öztürk-Övünç 2017). Subsidiary protection can be, provided for individuals who cannot be qualified either as “refugees” or as “conditional refugees” by the criteria of the Geneva Convention, but who also cannot be sent back to their country of origin because of the risk of death or torture. This status is not an interim status, such as conditional refugee status, and gives its recipient permanent settlement rights. These three statuses are considered collectively as “international protection status.” With respect to refugees, the geographical limitation version of the refugee status of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees still applies. That means refugee status can be granted only to people fleeing from “events occurring in Europe.” “Conditional refugee status,” adapted from the 1994 category “asylum seekers” can be given to persons who would qualify within the refugee definition of the 1951 Geneva Convention if they were from Europe. Persons with conditional refugee status are expected to settle in a third country. This is not a permanent status and is not intended to result in longer-term integration. Taken together, these three statuses—refugee, conditional refugee, and subsidiary protection—are known as “international protection status.”

Faced with the massive arrival of persons displaced by the Syrian conflict after 2011, a new set of instruments were gradually put in place. Syrians were initially defined as “guests” in Turkey, which is not a legal status under either Turkish or international law. It was announced that Turkey would grant Syrians Temporary Protection Status in October 2011 but this announcement was not initially followed by any law or regulation. When the number of Syrian refugees exceeded 100,000, as of October 2012 a directive was issued (Memisoglu and Ilgit 2016), but it remained unclear what this meant in practice because the regulation was not made public. Clarification came with the Law on Foreigners and International Protection—LFIP and with the Regulation on Temporary Protection issued in October 2014 based on article 91 of LFIP. By the terms of this law, individuals entering Turkey directly from Syria were expected to apply for Temporary Protection Status (thus the commonly used acronym SuTP, for Syrians under Temporary Protection). Persons arriving from countries other than Syria may apply for one or another of the categories of International Protection. Recognition of these statuses is under the authority of the Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM), as indicated by Law on Foreigners and International Protection.²⁰

Temporary Protection Status (TPS) extends collective protection to migrants who cannot meet the criteria under the 1951 Convention when the determination of an individual’s status proves impossible. This status promises group-based protection, providing immediate protection from refoulement and guaranteeing basic minimum treatment. This status was applied by EU member states in the 1990s to persons fleeing from the conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia and subsequently formalized by Council Directive 2001/55/EC of 20 July 2001, which set minimum standards for giving temporary protection in the event of a mass influx of displaced persons and on measures promoting a balance of efforts between member states in receiving such persons and bearing the consequences. It constitutes the legal basis of temporary protection in EU refugee law, and as such was part of the Acquis translated into Turkish law. This translation was not complete, since Turkey does not set an upper time limit for the duration of TPS, leaving this matter to the discretion of national authority (Öztürk-Övünç 2017). This point was further modified by the amendment of the regulation on temporary protection, numbered 1851, of December 2019 that vested this authority on this matter in the president.²¹ Turkish law now defines temporary protection as a status that “may be provided to foreigners, who were forced to leave their countries and are unable to return to the countries they left and have arrived at or crossed the borders of Turkey in a mass influx seeking immediate and temporary protection.” This status legally entitles those who hold it to public services such as education and health as well access to the labor market.

The choice of TPS status in the case of Syrians provides flexibility to the Turkish Government as it had for European Countries in the case of Bosnian refugees (Koser 2007). TPS is not a status defined in international law, but one governed by national and administrative law and regulations; no formal process is required in order to withdraw status and force repatriation. Even so, this distinction may be somewhat less important in practice than in principle. In Turkey, Sarı and Dinçer (2017: 75–76) argue that after failed coup of July 2016, the state of emergency increased detention and deportation of all migrants through Decree Law No. 676 dated October 2016. Article 36 of this decree explicitly facilitated the scope of deportation for national security reasons of people who have applied for or have received international protection status, which in this case proves no more secure than TPS. An additional regulation specified that persons with TPS could also be deported if they are found to have links with terrorist organizations. Although, the deported person can appeal, deportation can occur prior to any trial.²²

Increasing use of TPS has been criticized as a weakening of the prior regime of refugee rights (Fitzpatrick 2000). While this is true in principle, the experience of repeated “refugee crises” of the twenty-first century suggests that the contemporary political climate of Europe and North America rules out any sweeping application of refugee status, in its strict 1951 definition, to large numbers of forced migrants. The German experience of 2015–2016, when over one million forced migrants, mostly from Syria, were allowed to enter the country with a majority subsequently granted permanent right of residence, is the outstanding current exception to this. With five years of hindsight, however, it may be the exception that proves the rule. Taking into account both the human and political consequences of this decision, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has famously and frequently repeated that it was the right thing to do … and must never be done again.²³

In Turkey as elsewhere, thus, TPS is the relevant policy instrument. Taking the provisions detailed above at face value, it would seem that the social rights granted are quite extensive, including notably access to health and education. In Turkey, as we will see, these have largely been provided. More generally, this enumeration of rights brings us back to the discussion in Chap. 2 on the notion of “denizens.” Should we conclude that the granting of TPS to millions of forced migrants has endowed them with at least the core elements of Marshallian “social citizenship,” albeit in the absence of civic and political citizenship?

One obvious note of caution comes from the very word “temporary.” Although the Turkish TPS regime does not envisage an explicit upper limit for length of stay, access both to market transactions and to social services is not intended to be permanent.²⁴ Beyond this problem of stability are others, and here the situation of forced migrants rejoins that of other low-income persons. Formal rights are one thing, daily life is another. We noted in the introduction that poverty, discrimination, or handicap can be barriers to full citizenship, whatever one’s formal status. What remains to be seen is whether and to what extent theoretical rights can be translated to practical “full membership” in a market society. Proponents of CT see this instrument as providing a solution to precisely this problem—Leisering’s (2019: 320) “citizenship approach to poverty.” In the chapters that follow, we look to concrete examples to consider whether and under what conditions this claim might be justified.