Populism and pension system in Turkey

The global aging trend, which emerged as a result of demographic changes observed all over the world today, also affects Turkey. According to World Bank (WB) data for 2023, 10% of the world and 10.2% of Turkey consist of old age-population. It is estimated that this rate will increase to 16.5% in the world and 21.1% in Turkey in 2050. It is an inevitable necessity to establish well-planned and organized, sustainable retirement systems, taking into account the socioeconomic parameters against the aging demographic structure. However, by ignoring various socioeconomic indicators in the retirement policies implemented, the existence of various populist initiatives with the aim of political gain can be observed. This aspect of the situation negatively affects the sustainability of retirement systems, causing complex and chronic problems to emerge. The aim of this thesis is to determine whether there are populist approaches to retirement regulations and practices in Turkey.Thereby, 90 political party election declarations, 53 government programs, and 12 development plans created by policy actors (ruling and opposition parties and coalition partners) were examined between 1946 and 2023 by employing quantitative content analysis. The findings state that political actors made similar retirement promises despite ideological differences in their election declarations, avoided evaluating various socioeconomic parameters, did not detail their retirement promises with plans and projects, included similar promises regarding the socioeconomic problems of retirees in every election period, and government programs created after the election were identical to election declarations. On the other hand, development plans mention the solutions to eliminate the economic damage in the social security and retirement systems. The findings also state that the problems regarding the pension system and the socioeconomic status of retirees have become chronic due to populist approaches.