The 27th Legislative Term Grand National Assembly of Türkiye social assistance in budget meetings of the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Services

The Presidential Government System (PGS), which replaced the parliamentary system in Türkiye with the 2017 referendum, is a critical turning point for social policies. The new regime brought about a change in the function of the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye (TBMM) and the strengthening of the executive against the legislature. The impact of the changes in the preparation, submission and approval of the central government budget on the social assistance regime is an area of research worth examining. In this study, the changing social assistance paradigm in the neoliberal order and the social assistance discourses of the relevant ministers on behalf of the executive and the MPs carrying out legislative activities are evaluated through critical discourse analysis. The main axis of this study is to examine the discourse through the Parliamentary minutes on social assistance in the budget negotiations of the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Services in the 27th Legislative Period, which started in 2018 with the preparation of the first budget of the regime change and ended in 2023 after the approval of the last budget of the pre-election period. The main research question of this thesis is how the concept of social assistance, social assistance beneficiary groups, the relationship between social assistance and poverty, and the function of social assistance in the social quality of the state were discussed in the TBMM Planning and Budget Commission, and the General Assembly. The findings of the research show that dualism was prominent in the discussions on social assistance following the transition to the PGS and that certain concepts and discourses were repeated consistently. Alternative approaches based on social rights and universal basic income, which include the access of every individual to living conditions suitable for human dignity, and gender-sensitive budgeting, on the other hand, attracted attention but were not sufficiently debated during the budget negotiations. Keywords: Social assistance, social assistance budget, poverty, Grand National Assembly of Türkiye, Parliamentary minutes, Ministry of Family and Social Services, Presidential Government System, gender-sensitive budgeting