Reforms and Challenges: The Turkish Pension Regime Revisited

The financial crisis of 2008 and the ongoing economic turmoil in Southern European countries pose significant challenges to many welfare regimes and their pension systems. This paper analyzes the Turkish pension system and pension reforms in relation to welfare regime discussions in the literature. Via the application of the hierarchical cluster analysis to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data, this study shows that, supporting previous comparative studies, the Turkish pension regime can be characterized as a part of the Southern European welfare regime, and the 2006 pension reforms were implemented mainly to achieve a recalibration of the Turkish pension system. This paper asserts that although important improvements have been made toward achieving a sustainable and fair pension system, the Turkish pension system still has some structural problems with respect to intergenerational equity.