Welfare Provision as Political Containment

• Author: Erdem Yörük
• Published date: 01 December 2012
• Date: 01 December 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0032329212461130
• Subject Matter: Articles

Politics & Society

40(4) 517 –547

© 2012 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329212461130

http://pas.sagepub.com

461130PAS40410.1177/003232

9212461130Politics & SocietyYörük

1Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey

Corresponding Author:

Erdem Yörük, College of Social Science and Humanities, Social Sciences Building, Room Z 11A, Koç

University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, 34450 Sarıyer - Istanbul, Turkey

Email: eryoruk@ku.edu.tr

Welfare Provision as

Political Containment:

The Politics of Social

Assistance and the

Kurdish Conflict

in Turkey

Erdem Yörük1

Abstract

Can we argue that pressures generated from grassroots politics are responsible for

the rapid expansion and ethnically/racially uneven distribution of social assistance

programs in emerging economies? This ar ticle analyzes the Turkish case and shows that

social assistance programs in Turkey are directed disproportionately to the Kurdish

minority and to the Kurdish region of Turkey, especially to the internally displaced

Kurds in urban and metropolitan areas. The article analyzes a cross-sectional dataset

generated by a 10,386-informant stratified random sampling survey and controls for

possibly intervening socioeconomic factors and neighborhood-level fixed-effects. The

results show that high ethnic disparity in social assistance is not due to higher poverty

among Kurds. Rather, Kurdish ethnic identity is the main determinant of the access

to social assistance. This result yields substantive support to argue that the Turkish

government uses social assistance to contain the Kurdish unrest in Turkey. The Turkish

government seems to give social assistance not simply where the people become

poor, but where the poor become politicized. This provides support for Fox Piven and

Cloward’s thesis that relief for the poor is driven by social unrest, rather than social

need. The article concludes that similar hypotheses may hold true for other emerging

economies, where similar types of social assistance programs have recently expanded

significantly and have been directed to ethnic/racial groups.

518 Politics & Society 40(4)

Keywords

welfare, Turkey, Kurds, emerging economies, ethnic conflict

Introduction

During the last decade, Turkey has drastically expanded means-tested social assis-

tance and free health care programs for the poor, sharply increasing the number of

beneficiaries and the share of government budgets allocated. This has included dra-

matic increases in free health care, conditional cash transfers, food stamps, housing,

education, and disability aid for the poor. The most extensive social assistance pro-

gram in Turkey is the Green Card (Yeşil Kart) program, a means-tested free health

care program for the poor, which was introduced in 1992. Administered by the

Ministry of Health, this program has grown considerably during the 2000s, eventually

covering 12 percent of the population. Similarly, the General Directorate of Social

Assistance and Solidarity has significantly expanded education and health conditional

cash transfer programs, food stamps, housing, and education aid during the 2000s. In

2009, conditional cash transfers covered one million beneficiaries with health-based

conditions and 2.1 million with education-based conditions. Overall, between 2003

and 2009, total social expenditures as percentage of the GDP increased by 85 percent,

free health care card (Green Card) program expenditures by 115 percent, education-

based conditional cash transfer by 201 percent, health-based conditional cash transfer

by 313 percent, food stamps by 422 percent, housing aid by 2500 percent, education

aid by 772 percent and disability aid by 1034 percent1. In terms of coverage, the per-

centage of Green Card holders increased by 27 percent between 2004 and 2009,

education-based conditional cash transfer by 178 percent, health-based conditional

cash transfer by 197 percent, housing aid 903 percent, and disability aid by 277 per-

cent.2 In 2011, the Ministry of Family and Social Policy was established to administer

all central government programs and to introduce new social assistance benefits.

Furthermore, there has been a proliferation of social assistance programs imple-

mented by municipalities in almost every city.3

As I will illustrate in this article, aside from this rapid expansion, social assistance

programs are directed disproportionately at the Kurdish minority and to the Kurdish

region of Turkey, particularly to the internally displaced Kurds in urban and metropoli-

tan areas. This disparity cannot be explained by higher levels of poverty among the

Kurds. Rather, I suggest considering the impact of the Kurdish conflict in Turkey in

order to explain the striking ethnic disparity in the government’s provision of social

assistance. My findings suggest that the Turkish government uses social assistance to

contain the ongoing Kurdish unrest, which has become highly threatening with the

participation of impoverished Kurds in urban slums.

The expansion of the social assistance in Turkey is part of a global tendency. Over

the last decade, emerging economies4—including Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, India,

China, Indonesia and Turkey—have led the global rise of social assistance programs by

Yörük 519

rebuilding their welfare systems upon such programs.5 It is important to note that these

countries did not follow in the footsteps of the Western world, but instead invented new

forms of social assistance programs, which then spread to Western countries and low-

income countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America through World Bank and

International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies.6 Rapid expansion of conditional cash

transfer programs that require the beneficiaries to participate in education or health-

related public programs are good examples of this trend. The Economist described the

Brazilian conditional cash transfer program Bolsa Família as an “anti-poverty scheme

invented in Latin America” which “is winning converts worldwide.”7 Today, more than

forty countries have adopted or planned conditional cash transfer programs, comprising

a total budget of US$8.25 billion worldwide.8 But, conditional cash transfers are not the

only social assistance programs proliferating through emerging markets. A broader

array of assistance programs is targeted at the informal poor, of which the Turkish

Green Card program is a good example. As I will discuss in more detail in the last sec-

tion, the Indonesian free health care program Askeskin, the Mexican health insurance

program, Seguro Popular, the Chinese Minimum Living Standard Assistance program,

and similar programs in other emerging economies have largely expanded their cover-

age and budget since the 1990s.

Scholarly explanations for the global rise of social assistance programs have mostly

emphasized structural, rather than political, factors, including the rise of poverty,

aging, labor informalization, unemployment, deindustrialization, and the rise of the

service sector.9 The literature on poverty and social assistance programs in Turkey has

been guided by this structural perspective.10 Scholars have argued that with the rapid

rural-to-urban migration, jobless economic growth policies, and the commodification

of urban land, nonstate social protection mechanisms have eroded since the 1990s.

This erosion has necessitated the expansion of state-led social assistance programs to

cover the growing informal poor.11

Yet these structural factors alone cannot explain the disproportionate targeting of

Kurdish ethnic identity in Turkish social assistance programs. A political explanation

is needed because politics is deeply rooted in the formation of Kurdish ethnic identity

in Turkey. I have derived a possible political explanation from a previous literature,

which argues that political containment and mobilization of grassroots groups were

important factors driving the midcentury expansion of Western welfare states. In the

United States, Cloward and Fox Piven have described relief for the poor as a political

mechanism to “regulate the poor.”12 They claim that poor relief in capitalist societies

has two political functions: First, in times of civil disorder, relief systems expand as a

means of establishing control over the disorderly; but when disorder subsides, relief

rolls contract. Thus, the key impetus for expanding social assistance is not social need,

but social disorder. Second, when there is no unrest, relief for the poor tends to assume

a highly stigmatizing character, driving the poor to the labor market to work for lower

wages. Thus, the second function of relief for the poor is to reinforce work norms.13

This argument has created a longstanding debate, sharply dividing scholars of welfare

systems who have tried to validate and invalidate the central argument of the Regulating