Old-age policies in Republican Turkey: A critical examination of legal and policy documents

This study employs Critical Discourse Analysis to examine how old-age policy in Republican Turkey is constructed in legal and policy texts, the normative/ideological bases that legitimize it, and the discourses through which older persons are represented. Fairclough's three-level model (text, discursive practice, social practice) is combined with Wodak's discourse-historical approach. A corpus of constitutional and statutory instruments, development plans, and strategy /action documents (1923-present) was coded and analyzed in MAXQDA 2024, including co-occurrence analysis. Findings: a persistent technocratic-administrative rhetoric at the textual level; a strong need-based/protectionist axis from the early period; and, post-2000, a rise in rights-based language tempered-often instrumentalized-by discourses of performance, effectiveness, and fiscal discipline. In discursive practice, production/circulation center on ministries and presidential directorates; development plans and strategy papers function as key vehicles; EU alignment and inter-institutional governance shape policy language. In social practice, a family-centered care regime remains hegemonic alongside growing institutional and local capacity. The post-COVID-19 phase constitutes a rupture: older persons are reframed via vulnerability and risk management; digitalization, isolation, and surveillance enter legitimation strategies. Conclusion: despite movement toward rights-bearing status, an integrated and durable institutional/discursive architecture remains limited. The analysis indicates the need to overcome the assistance-administration track; integrate long-term care across the health-social services-local government nexus; establish access and quality indicators; address gender- and disability-based intersectionality; and secure sustainable finance. Linking CDA with welfare-regime debates, the study advances theory, introduces a periodized, replicable coding scheme, and yields rights-based, evidence-informed guidance for policy design.