The Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) compound of the Social Risk Mitigation Project, practiced since 2004 aims at implementing a social assistance system targeted to the poorest 6% of the population conditional on improved use of basic health and education services. In the framework of the CCT program, the target population includes families who cannot send their children to school or who pay regular health visits for their children. The program envisages at assisting the target population economically by providing regular cash payment on the condition the children attend school regularly and the health visits realized. The CCT is interesting for the panel’s theme because it is a social assistance program that places women into its focus not only by ensuring integration to health and education services, but also by giving the money directly to women. In this regard, the program clearly states its goal as the empowerment of women’s socio-economic status within the household and outside, but whether it really achieves this goal or not is not questioned. In this paper, I would like to present the findings of my recent research conducted on the city of Mersin, situated at the South of Turkey, on the Mediterranean coast. In the last 20 years the city received a massive influx of Kurdish forced migrant population who is defined by poverty and to whom the social assistance program is mostly aimed. In the paper I would like to discuss whether this social assistance program could have an inclusionary influence on the women belonging to the Kurdish population who experienced (and still experience in some ways) the deepest exclusionary process in Turkey.
