Policies to tackle youth unemployment in Turkey with reference to policy integration approach (2003-2018)

Historically, public policy has evolved into a discipline in which new models and approaches have started to emerge in the analysis of policy making and implementation processes. "Policy Integration" (PE), which is one of these new approaches, is a public policy approach that refers to the coming together of policy actors in different sectors by adopting a collective perspective to solve wicked, complex or multidimensional problems. This approach, which was developed mostly to analyse the problems in environmental policy and to solve them in an integrated framework, started to come to the fore with the analysis of "wicked" problems that can be seen in many fields from health to education in the mean time. During the youth period, individuals with a dynamic and energetic structure have a high potential to encounter problems in areas such as education, economy and health. Youth unemployment is seen as one of these important problems. Young people get unemployed for brief or long periods of time due to a variety of macro or micro factors. The development of societies, nations, and young people all face massive costs as a result of the unemployment process. As a matter of fact, young people who are unemployed for a long time begin to lose their skills over time and experience psychological problems. Unemployment of young people negatively affects the development and production process of countries. Active and passive employment policies are implemented in order to reduce youth unemployment, which has been on the rise in Turkey, especially since the 2000s. The aim of this study is to reveal whether there is a sufficient level of integration relationship between the policy objectives in the policy documents such as the development plans and strategic plans in force in Turkey in the 2003-2018 period and the solution of youth unemployment. The data and findings necessary to achieve the purpose of the study were obtained through "content analysis" and "document analysis". This analysis has revealed that the policy targets developed to prevent youth unemployment in Turkey are not effective in ensuring integration between different sectors.