Social security professionals and academics perspective with a qualitative research on the social security system in Turkey

Social security is a phenomenon that exists with human history. The need for social security has been tried to be met according to the current conditions of the day throughout the history. Social security systems, which could not be considered independent of the economic situation of the countries, entered a transformation with the crises that occurred towards the end of the 19th century. Regarding the field, while some views suppport the idea tha the social security system must be abolished and this need must be left to individual responsibility, that is, the system must be privatized, some have argued that systems must be restructured. Thus, each country has implemented certain reforms according to its current situation. Turkey launched the reform with the General Health Insurance Law in 2006. In this study, the post-reform social security system was evaluated from the perspective of experts and suggestions for the future of the system were presented. As a research, semi-structured interviews were conducted with academicians working in the field of social security and people working as social security experts. A case study was conducted as a research design. The data obtained by interviewing the participants were analyzed with the Nvivo 12 Plus program, one of the programs used for qualitative research. In the findings obtained at the end of the analysis; It can be said that the social security system is particularly strong in terms of population coverage, the unification of social security institutions that come with the reform process under one roof, GSS and changing pension criteria. Its weaknesses are the sustainability problem, high unregistered employment, non-adherence to reform, reform-related grievances, ongoing early retirement practices, unrequited payments in social insurance and lowering the monthly bond rate. The prominent views of the participants regarding the non-premium regime are the absence of a specific law, the lack of aid and services from one hand, the negative situations caused by the benefits and the status of the non-premium regimes in terms of social insurance. The participants stated in their proposals for the system that changes were made to existing practices rather than a new reform. Preventing informality with an effective control mechanism, changing the retirement structure, regulating non-premium regimes, reorganizing the law numbered 5510 are among the suggestions for the system.