Welfare policy regime in terms of care: Comparative analysis of Southern Europe and Turkey

Social welfare state can be generally described as a state seeking to provide social peace and social justice in the society. In his seminal book, "Three Faces of Welfare State", Gosta Esping Andersen classifies social welfare state models into three different categories; Liberal, Conservative and Social Democrat welfare states. He has been severely criticized for disregarding Southern European countries. However, Leibfried categorized countries such as Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece constitutes as forth model that is South European Welfare states. These countries have share many similarities due to attributing the key role to the family. Turkey, sharing many similarities with those states has also been categorized as South European Welfare state in countless reports and articles. It is the central aim of the theses is to make a comparative analysis on the care policies between Southern Europe countries and Turkey. The thesis argues that although Turkey is categorized as Southern welfare state, Turkey's expenditure on the care policies is much lower than these states.