What is the price of the breakdowns in the family?

The family is one of the institutions through which we in Türkiye describe ourselves best and which we regard as a source of pride. It is the basic and natural institution in which the values that make us who we are are first taught and instilled. For that reason, even preserving our family structure as it is has been seen by us as a matter of national survival.

The family is the place where all the other sociological institutions are provided and reproduced. It is the school where the first religious education, values education and first awareness of the state-nation relationship are given. But at the same time, a family life with mother, father, siblings and relatives is also the firmest guarantee of a person's personal-psychological development. When the family structure dissolves, the greatest support of these educations dissolves too. Making up for this deficiency afterward through formal education institutions is not so easy.

More important still, family life is the guarantee of the population structure, that is, of the population's reproducing itself. The young population provided by the many-children family structure in Türkiye has been for years one of the things we have boasted of as our greatest advantage. In recent years Türkiye has come to the point of rapidly losing its advantage in this regard. So much so that this has become a serious problem for Türkiye.

The fertility rate in Türkiye, which was 2.38 children in 2001, fell to 1.51 in 2023, remaining below 2.10, the population replacement level. However you look at it, this points to a serious danger for our family life. At the same time, against the great progress and development Türkiye has achieved in many areas in the last 23 years, this picture shows that we face a great paradox. Is this decline in our family life a price of the unparalleled, rapid development we have been in for 23 years?

On Monday, at the Family Year Launch Program held at the Presidential Complex, President Erdoğan said they had declared 2025 the "Year of the Family." Stating that supporting the work to be carried out within the framework of the Family Year with effective and efficient population policies and carrying it to a strong and sustainable footing in the long term is one of the greatest priorities, Erdoğan also recalled that on December 25 they had established two important bodies to operate within our Ministry of Family: the Family Institute and the Population Policies Board. This Board "will develop short, medium and long-term strategies for a healthy population structure. Our Institute will carry out scientific, academic and policy-developing activities concerning the family, which we regard as a matter of survival for the future of our nation."

The establishment of the Board is undoubtedly very important. It shows that the problem is recognized and taken very seriously. Indeed, President Erdoğan has for years been aware of this dangerous course in family and population behavior. He has made it known to all through his constant emphasis on "3 children." But today we have now seen clearly that emphasizing 3 children on every occasion is not enough to stop the sociological developments that deeply affect our family life or to remove their bad effects on the family.

One of the critical findings on this subject is that the unparalleled, rapid development we have been in for 23 years has a price. Perhaps we need to understand better the processes affecting our family life and to see that we can take more effective, infrastructural measures by reviewing this development model of ours.

Türkiye has become a country that urbanizes, universitizes and develops very rapidly. The urbanization rate, which was only in the 20 percents in 1950, has risen these days above the nineties. Moreover, our villages too are now thoroughly integrated with the city. One result of development is women's actual participation in working life, their thorough individualization both in lifestyle and in mentality, and their moving thoroughly away from the mission of motherhood. Rising living standards weaken not only women's mission of motherhood but also men's mission of fatherhood.

The universitization rate, which has left even the most developed countries behind, is creating a new personality, a new individual culture. In this culture there is not much room for the family, let alone the family with children. The piling up at university doors, at the end of 12 years of compulsory education, of people who would have difficulty even finishing high school sets off an irreversible process of social mobility. At first glance this creates a very positive picture in terms of the rise in education level or a sacred value like "equality of opportunity," but the positive picture also has a cost. For example, at first, the functions that this segment of the population should be performing in the natural channel are left unattended. One of these functions is the employment areas that are left vacant, and the most important is moving away from, even becoming alienated from, family life.

First of all, this situation leads to a serious change in Türkiye's social structure. That is, the change in the family structure is a result of change in many other areas, and then family life in turn continues to change other areas according to its latest state.

Therefore we should not regard the sources of the losses in our family structure as limited to changes of views and attitudes within the family itself. The matter has broader, more comprehensive sociological contexts and causes.

Many actions taken with good intentions can have very bad results. Legal or economic-social measures taken in the name of empowering women, far from empowering women, have produced the opposite results, in which women are the first victims. Laws that outwardly protect women have in the end given the opposite results, have disrupted the social fabric peculiar to Türkiye, and have created strange situations in which women are left alone with their own fate and defenseless. Thank God the error of the Istanbul Convention was recognized and reversed, but the problem was not only the Istanbul Convention; it will not have been solved by canceling it.

We have still not confronted, for example, the consequences of encouraging women to participate more in working life. The dissolution of the family structure and the dangerous decline in birth rates are directly affected by this. Instead of encouraging women to enter working life, we must take measures that will dignify their role within the family and treat housewifery and motherhood as a profession.

Developments concerning the family are a result of other social developments. We need an approach that will read those social developments well, evaluate them well and follow radical policies

very badly.

The matter is one of national security, and in this direction the process launched by the Ministry of Family is very important, but it requires a national policy in which many institutions take part together.