IS TURKEY IN A VICIOUS CYCLE?: AN ANALYSIS ON ROSANVALLON’S CRITICISM OF THE WELFARE STATE

Abstract

Pierre Rosanvallon’s criticism of the welfare state, since he considers the welfare state not only as an economic structure but also as a socio-cultural structure, offers a different perspective compared to neoliberal criticisms that directly oppose the welfare state and claim that it has come to an end. Rosanvallon’s analysis of the reasons for the collapse of the welfare state in the 1980s can actually be read as a last and brave effort to revive the welfare state. In this study, Rosanvallon’s findings will be read in terms of showing why and how the principle of the “welfare state”, which although its roots can be seen in an earlier period in Turkey, found a permanent place in the political vocabulary of the state with the 1961 Constitution, works dysfunctionally, and beyond that, how it combines with the traditional authoritarian structure of the state apparatus and turns the state into the “boss” of civil society and how it undermines the concept of the “individual” in the daily lives of the Turkish people. In this sense, the article analyzes Rosanvallon’s work to revive the welfare state, and uses it to identify the damages inflicted on civil society and political culture by the Republic of Turkey, which has an authoritarian face reinforced by military coups, and to present a roadmap to eliminate these damages with an updated reading of the welfare state. Using Rosanvallon’s understanding of the welfare state, the article explains how the relationship between authoritarianism and tutelage systems and the welfare state creates a vicious circle, and questions how this vicious circle can be broken with a re-imagined understanding of the welfare state.