Turkey's Declining Fertility Rate and Evaluation of the Population Policy Council

Abstract

The institution of the family is facing serious threats with the global change and digital transformation process and brings the concept of fertility to the agenda. As in the rest of the world, the total fertility rate in Turkey continues to decline at an alarming rate every year. The decline in the total fertility rate associated with the family brings the discussions on population as an element of strategic power to the forefront. In this context, the Population Policies Board and the Family Institute were established under the Ministry of Family and Social Services with the Presidential Decree in order to combat possible future population-related threats, protect the institution of family and determine strategic population policies for Turkey. In this study, the functionality of the board on population policies, its nature as a supervisory and regulatory board, its organisational structure within the scope of public administration management and good governance principles were evaluated. In addition to a review of the academic literature related to the research, a document analysis was conducted through the database of TurkStat. Within the scope of the study, a fictional case study is presented to eliminate the possible risk posed by the low fertility rate. The aim of this review study is to evaluate the problems that the Population Policies Board and the Family Institute may face in practice in terms of legal, administrative, financial and technical organisational structure, and to provide opinions and suggestions on the solution of possible problems that may be encountered by making use of SWOT analysis.