Cultural Foundations of Social Policy: A Study on the Establishment Discussions of the Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundations

Social policies emerge as a result of a process in which many actors interact with each other directly or indirectly. Culture is a concept that encompasses all these relationships. The relationship between culture and social policies can be observed at all stages of social policies. This study examines the founding law of the Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundations, Türkiye’s f irst comprehensive policy toward the poor, through the cultural dimension of the discussions held in the General Assembly of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. The study attempts within its scope to understand the extent to which the phenomenon of culture has been taken into consideration and how it has been perceived during the approval phase of a social policy attempting to be created. The study uses the content analysis method and aims to initiate a new discussion in Turkish literature in terms of addressing the relationship between culture and social policy. The justification of the bill the government has presented is a cultural manifesto in terms of its content. Throughout the discussions, the ruling party that presented the bill was observed to frequently make references to cultural values in order to defend the bill’s legitimacy. The opposition parties’ objections appear to have also been based heavily on cultural arguments. None of the political parties were understood to have objected to the income transfer, and the cultural dimension of social policies was seen to have manifested itself explicitly and implicitly throughout the General Assembly discussions.