Straddling two continents and beyond three worlds? The case of Turkey’s welfare regime

Abstract

This article aims to consider how Turkey has been classified in the welfare regime literature, and on what basis it has been classified. This will then form the basis for exploring whether there appears to be any variation between approaches and methods and/or between the “position” (e.g., location or language) of the authors. Studies of Turkey’s welfare regime exhibit a significant degree of variation in terms of both approaches and conclusions, resulting in little in the way of consensus. Among Turkish-language studies (and some, but not all, Turkish scholars writing in English), there does seem to be a broad consensus that Turkey may be classified as part of the Southern European welfare model, which squares with the modal conclusion of the English-language studies on the topic. However, some “regional” studies conclude that Turkey is part of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, while many of the cluster analyses suggest a wide variety of clusters that are not geographically contiguous.