Family Futures

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Family Education Programme: advancing social

integration and intergenerational solidarity in Turkey

Emre Ertekin and Serdar Özhan, Ministry of Family and Social Policy, Republic of Turkey

dvancing

ocial

ntegration

and

ntergenerational

olidarity

ocated at the crossroads of three continents connect-

ing east and west; north and south, Turkey includes

six different climate cultures: Mediterranean, Black

Sea, Balkans, Caucasian, Middle East and Europe. Some

97 per cent of Turkey’s territory is in Asia and 3 per cent

is in Europe. Turkey has a history of three major empires

at the very heart of the land, which was called Anatolia

throughout the last millennium. These are the Eastern

Roma, Seljuk and Ottoman empires, which have enabled

the country’s settlers with a culture of welfare.

The Turkish Republic has a distinctive culture, being both a

convergent and divergent point of Western and Eastern civiliza-

tions with more than 19 million households and a population

of 75 million. The average household size is 3.7, which is

comparatively higher than the average for European countries

and lower than that of Middle Eastern countries. These house-

holds cover the full range of the social and cultural complexity of

terra Anatolia – the entire social spectrum from professional to

unskilled occupations; from affluence to poverty; from Muslims

to Christians and Jews (with different sects from Sunnis to Shias;

Roman Catholic Church to Greek Orthodox Church); from

passionate believers to nominal and irreligious ones; from Turks

to Roma, Kurds and Arabs. This diverse structure of households

also covers house owners and renters; the long-married and

newlyweds; wide composite three- or four-generation house-

holds and households of people living alone; families with

numerous relatives living close at hand and families whose kin

are thin on the ground and widely scattered beyond the borders,

mainly including Germany, France, Austria, Bulgaria, Eastern

European countries, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Azerbaijan.

With all these distinctive characteristics the family in Turkey,

like families the world over, is accepted as a pillar institution. It

functions as a primary actor in the whole socialization process

whereby the individual is integrated into culture and society at

large. Family still means a lot in Turkey as it forms a significant

universe of meaning in the lives of individuals, giving direction

to life by both causing and dismissing tensions. As the family’s

multifunctional and contrasting features are still essential to the

formation of an individual’s existence and identity, the expecta-

tions from the family are comparatively high in Turkey.

As the state in Turkey aims to build up welfare, the question of

how to allocate welfare production and responsibilities between

market, family and government has become a more erratic issue

since the 1990s. These three institutions are mutually interde-

pendent: the market produces material welfare including income

and employment facilities; the family produces emotional welfare

including security and care services for family members; and the

state decides on the distribution of responsibility betweenmarket

and family. Because Turkey has a transitory economic structure,

fluctuating market conditions have blurred the future, raised the

risk and caused many crises. Global and local risks causing crises

and failures in the markets have intensified the importance of

family in terms of its capacity to absorb and compensate in the

event of the failure of individual members. Hence, in transitory

countries, governments pay much attention and spend more on

family policy, to empower the family’s problem-solving and care-

providing capacities.

As mentioned above, household sizes in Turkey are bigger

than those in developed countries. Although the nuclear family

seems widespread in Turkey, the average household size and

close blood agnation between families builds up an environ-

ment for the socialization of individuals in which family is the

prime actor, designer and stage director in constituting networks,

commitments and convictions. Moreover, studies on urban and

rural areas show that there is vast variation within Turkey in

The family is seen as a pillar of society in Turkey, forming a universe of

meaning in the lives of individual members

Image: Veysel Kaya