Turkish health policies: past, present, and future

Abstract

In this article, health policies in Turkey from the 1900s to the present are reviewed in light of the available data on the number of health institutions, life expectancy, infant mortality, and state budget allocation. While a significant quantitative development is observed in the provision of health services, the state by far maintained a leading role in the provision of health services until the 1980s, when an initially weak but steady deviation began, significantly increasing its pace from 2002 and creating a new path where the private sector raised its share with the extensive implementation of neoliberal economic policies. The emergence of public-private partnership projects as a financing tool in the health sector, with various models from the 1990s around the world, found its place in the Turkish health system in the form of city hospitals from 2013, creating a new deviation in the provision of health services by the state.