United Nations development programme resident representative Mahmood Ayub has stressed the importance of youth for a nation, saying that: “Turkey’s young men and women are its next generation. They have skills and ambitions, vision and energy. But they need to be given opportunities to utilize these to the fullest. If this can be achieved, the country’s future will be assured and sustainable”.
According to the 2007 Population Census, there are more than 12 million youth between the ages of 15-24 in Turkey, or 17.6 percent of the total population. Youth – which the report defines as people between 15 and 24 years of age – face a wide variety of challenges in Turkey.
The unemployment rate for young people currently stands at 17-18 percent, almost twice the national average. Nearly 40 percent of youth (almost 5 million people) are idle, neither working nor attending school. Gender discrimination, curtailing the prospects of young women, has not been tackled with sufficient strength.
Turkey started a strong process of modernization under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk after 1923 but is lagging behind countries with comparable per capita income in the area of social policy. Turkey, the fastest growing country economically in its region, with one of the largest population of youth, needs to catch up with this international progress, the report says.
A youth policy is important to ensure higher levels of human development, as defined by greater human choices. But it is also crucial in order to stave off some potentially crushing demographic challenges. The experience of East Asian countries demonstrates that a large youth cohort can help propel an economy to very high growth rates. However, the experience of other countries, for example in Latin America, has also shown that this positive outcome is by no means guaranteed. Thus it is crucial that the working-age population is indeed working in high value-adding jobs.
“The favourable ratio of young to old in the coming decades presents opportunities as well as challenges for the government,” says the report. “Turkey has a 15-year window of opportunity to prepare today’s youth for the challenges ahead. After 15 years, about 70% of Turkey’s population will be of working age and the working-age population will be increasing, though at a decreasing rate, until 2040. This demographic transition, when population growth rate is declining while the working age population keeps rising is called “the demographic window of opportunity.” Such an episode is a one-off opportunity in a country’s history. If Turkey can give the right opportunities to its youth today, to invest in their education in order to prepare them for higher value-added jobs in the future, the demographic window of opportunity can be utilized effectively. But if this opportunity is mismanaged, unemployment, poverty, and social unrest may lie ahead.”
During 2002-2006, when the average annual growth rate was 7.5 percent, the unemployment rate stubbornly remained unchanged around 10 percent. Population growth keeps outpacing employment growth and educated young people have difficulty finding jobs.
