Global Social Policy Prescription Versus Local Realities: An Assessment on Pension Reforms in Turkey

Changing socio-economic conditions and emerging new challenges in welfare states endanger sustainability of social security systems and create new social problems globally. In this regard, emergent paradigm change has caused to unavoidable need of reorganization in the welfare states. The debates on financial sustainability of social security systems and the role of public in the systems have brought with pension reforms all over the world. In most of countries, pension reforms initiated by the international organizations –such as World Bank- are composed of two elements. The first one is parametric reforms which have limited access to pension benefits and reduced the level of pension generosity with the purpose of financial sustainability in the public pension programs. The second one is paradigmatic reforms which have led to a decreasing role of the public pension programs, along with an increasing role of supplementary private pension programs (occupational and individual pension plans). In this context, pension provision is provided by the multi –pillar systems. This study aims to analyze the feasibility of multi-pillar pension system in Turkey. The rationale of this study is to investigate the feasibility of multi-pillar pension system in Turkey in the light of the effects of private pension programs implemented in the different welfare regimes and the past and current experiences in Turkey. The experiences of paradigmatic pension reforms in different welfare regimes indicate that the characteristics of welfare regime; labour markets and industrial relations are the main determinants of coverage and sustainability of private pension programs. When the structures of welfare system, labour market and industrial relations in Turkey are analyzed, it can be said that there are big question marks related with sustainability of global multi-pillar pension prescription as a solution of pension system problems in Turkey.