Feminist Institutionalist Analysis of the Care Regime in Turkey

This manuscript explores the transformation of Turkey's long-term care regime from a feminist institutionalist perspective. Consistent with global trends, Turkey has witnessed an expansion in long-term care services over the past two decades. This expansion can be partly attributed to shifts in family structure, such as the transition from extended to nuclear and single-headed households. These changes pose challenges in maintaining old-aged care within families, particularly given the ageing population. In response to such challenges, the implicitly familialistic care regime has been transforming in the last two decades; new policy initiatives have been introduced primarily to support the family’s caregiving role. One could argue that the change in the care regime revolves around marketised care services, the expansion of home-based care facilities and cash transfer schemes (Akkan, 2018). These elements lie at the core of ongoing tensions between continuity and change, contesting the institutional boundaries of the long-term care regime. The transformations involve rediscovering the boundaries between formal and informal institutions, connected to the complex combination of ideologically reproduced family policies and expanding long-term care arrangements facilitated by market mechanisms. In elucidating such features of the transformation observed in Turkey’s long-term care regime, this manuscript draws on the notion of gradual institutional change (Mahoney and Thelen 2010) yet adopts a feminist institutionalist perspective. The incremental changes within existing institutional boundaries (Thelen 2011) must be viewed in the context of the gendered nature of both formal and informal institutions. Consequently, this gendered aspect permeates the overall character of regimes (Waylen 2017, 2019). In Turkey, gendered analysis of institutional change reveals a “nested newness” (Mackay, 2014) if one considers the prevailing gendered rules and practices. In this framework, adapting a feminist institutionalist perspective, this manuscript analyses the interplay of formal and informal institutions in understanding gendered processes and outcomes of the changing care regime. The manuscript explores long-term care policies concerning market and family dynamics and uncovers how change and continuity in long-term care policies contribute to the persistence of gender and class disparities in Turkey.