Evalution of the social assistance in Turkey from 1983 to present

Social assistance and solidarity is a phenomenon equivalent to history of mankind and derived from the day that human start to live together. Together with development and transformation of the society, this concept both changed and improved in meaning and in institutional frame. Poverty is one of the biggest problem that mankind live throughout the ages. The other one is injustice of income distribution.In the face of this situation, the social state phenomenon which grew especially in western europe since 1950?s tried to reduce injustice of income distribution and tried to offer people a life in dignity. States need to put social state principal to their constitution or forced to do so. Turkey has adopted the social state principle and taken very important steps with the 1961 Constitution. In this way lots of justice has been common to all community sector. In 1980?s and especially in 1990?s Neo-liberal politicies has begun to widespread in worldwide that resulted in reducing the expenditure of the social state.Although Turkey had some kind of social institutions in Ottoman period, Turkey has established new agencies in republican period. The biggest corporate structure has been established in 1986 called ?Social Assistance and Solidarity Encouragement Fund?. This institution has been made general management in 2004 and still operates. The provincial sector of this institution called Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundations organised in all city centers and towns to coordinate social assistance activities.This paper aim to show that the social state phenomenon is loosing its original meaning with the intervention of politics. The paper use wide range of data and reports to prove transformation of social assistance phenomenon to a political instrument. This paper criticise the efficiency of social assistance because of the multi centered administration structure of social assistance institutions.Offerings part of the paper has been divided three main parts; first part include criticising of not to transform social assistance phenomenon to a political instrument, second part is emphasizing the need of establishment of unique centered administraiton in social assistance institutions and the last part is giving some advices for reducing poverty in Turkey.KEY WORDS: Turkey, Social State, Social Assistance, Political Interests, Poverty, Coordination, Social Politics.