Development of social dialogue at the EU level and in Turkey - efforts to pursue more autonomously in the EU and challenges to consolidate the situation in Turkey

In the globalization process, social dialogue brings employee and employer side together in order to find common solutions, which may satisfy both sides, regarding economic and social policies. Thereby, various interest groups are represented. Social dialogue at the European Union (EU) level is one of the most important key stones of the European Social Model, which provides for the joint involvement of the representatives of the organisations of management and labour in European policy-making, since the participation of social partners has been granted with the constitutional framework. However, in recent years European social partners have emphasized that they wish to conduct a more autonomous social dialogue. As a requirement of accession process, Turkey needs to adopt EU's acquis communataire, revising related policy fields in order to harmonize national legislation. Since the social policy and social dialogue as a component of it, Turkey overrates social dialogue in the agenda, despite its weak industrial relations history. This paper is concerned with the analysis of the social dialogue at the EU level, changing structure of the European social dialogue in the course of time and providing data on the current social dialogue in Turkey and consequently to find out challenges within the social dialogue system in Turkey.