Turks at the present time (1995) are in fact making an average of 2.5 children per woman, and the figure is falling steadily. (footnote: This figure is the total fertility rate (TFR). It is a current measure. It shows how many live born children women are having at present. It is calculated by summing the age-specific birth rates of women for the ages of potential childbearing from age 15 to 49.)

Women, together with their spouses, will make only two children on average (plus a small margin to cover infant and early-age mortality) from the year 2005 onwards. This is according to the official population projection of the State Planning Organization (SPO) for the next Five-Year Plan. Concerning the size of the population, the projection shows that the population would reach 98 million before stabilizing around the mid-21st century. (footnote: A population projection is a forecast of future population size and age-sex structure based on assumptions about the future trend of fertility, mortality, and international migration. A mathematical model is used to make the projection. Such projections give reasonably good estimates for large countries such as Turkey for short time periods into the future; e.g., up to fifteen or twenty years. The assumptions can be violated by unexpected developments and this will cause errors, sometimes serious ones, for dates in the more distant future.

The State Institute of Statistics (1995: 66) made four alternative projections. They assume that the total fertility rate (TFR) will reach the so-called replacement level of 2.1 children by 2000 or 2005. The SPO selected the most conservative (highest) alternative of the four projections. Personally, my reading of the trends is that Turkey will reach a total fertility of 2.1 by the year 2000 at the latest. This alternative gives a maximum population of about 95 million.)

The reason why population continues to increase even after fertility falls to a level at which parents only replace themselves is due to the famous "population momentum," which is discussed immediately below. The SPO's "plan" for two- child families is simply a recognition of what people are doing. It is not an aggressive policy to persuade them to do anything different. Erbakan's admonition, on the other hand, asks them to change their actions and have four children. Others have endorsed the same reasoning, thinking that births at the rate of two per woman mean the population will grow no more.

Population momentum in Turkey can be visualized by looking at the following population pyramids for 1995, 2005, and 2050 which are based on the assumption that the average number of children per woman (and her husband) stabilizes at 2.1 children in 2005 (SPO assumption). I want to show why the population continues to increase in size when there is no excess fertility; i.e., that it is not necessary to have four children per family for the population to continue to grow for at least another 50 or so years.

    Population pyramids

           1995
  Males           Females

        *  75+  **
        * 70-74 **
      *** 65-69 ***
     **** 60-64 ****
     **** 55-59 ****
     **** 50-54 ****
    ***** 45-49 *****
  ******* 40-44 *******
   ******** 35-39 ********
 ********** 30-34 **********
 ********** 25-29 **********
   ************ 20-24 ************
  ************* 15-19 *************
 ************** 10-14 *************
  *************  5-9  *************
  *************  0-4  *************

   Size = 61.6 million


         2005
  Males           Females

      **  75+  ***
      ** 70-74 ***
     *** 65-69 ***
    **** 60-64 ****
   ***** 55-59 *****
   ******* 50-54 ******
  ******** 45-49 ********
********** 40-44 *********
********** 35-39 **********
  ************ 30-34 ***********
 ************* 25-29 *************
 ************* 20-24 *************
 ************* 15-19 *************
 ************* 10-14 *************
 *************  5-9  *************
 *************  0-4  *************

  Size = 71.7 million


          2050
   Males           Females

 *********  75+  *************
  ******** 70-74 *********
********** 65-69 ***********
   *********** 60-64 ***********
   *********** 55-59 ************
  ************ 50-54 ************
  ************ 45-49 ************
  ************ 40-44 ************
 ************* 35-39 ************
 ************* 30-34 *************
 ************* 25-29 *************
 ************* 20-24 *************
 ************* 15-19 *************
 ************* 10-14 *************
 *************  5-9  *************
 *************  0-4  *************

  Size = 98.2 million

Note: Each symbol (*) represents
  approximately 255,000 individuals.
    

When there is no excess fertility above approximately two children per woman, the number of individuals added at the bottom of the pyramid (0-4) stabilizes. Notice that the bottom of the pyramid is the same size in all three pyramids, including the last one in 2050. Every five years, the individuals on one age level of the pyramid move up one level until they disappear from the pyramid due to death (or out-migration).

As individuals get older they face the risk of death according to the age-specific mortality conditions of the time. The older people in the 1995 pyramid were born long ago when the expectation of life at birth was a good deal less than it is now, so fewer survived. (footnote: The expectation of life at birth is the average number of years that a newborn babies may expect to live before dying if health conditions (age-specific death rates) do not change during their lifetimes. Of course, reductions in age-specific death rates historically over time give to those who are still surviving some additional years of life expectancy. Probabilities of dying at older ages are to a great extent, but not entirely, independent of the health conditions that persons faced in their younger years.) Furthermore, the population was smaller and hence births were fewer. So fewer people were added and survived to reach the upper part of the pyramid; i.e., it is not very fat.

However, as time passes after 1995, people will get older and more of them will survive with the high expectation of life -- currently about 65 years. Life expectancy will continue to increase, so the projections assume it will reach the low 70s. The basic reason why the total population keeps on growing is that people get older without dying until rather high ages are reached. The fact of "not dying" adds to the width of the pyramid at older ages as time passes. Compare the last pyramid for 2050 with the one for 2005. All of the increase -- population momentum -- is in the age groups above 30 years of age.

The last pyramid shows the age and sex structure, and the population size, after the population momentum is basically exhausted. This pyramid will go on being reproduced year after year after the population stabilizes. The projection foresees a constant population size and structure from the mid-21st century onwards, unless fertility rates fall or rise, or mortality rates get better or worse, or international migration makes significant additions or subtractions of individuals.

If Erbakan -- or for that matter any change in the agency of political authorities or in local culture -- were able to persuade every family to have four children, and all women to marry, the pyramid would get wider and wider at the bottom. Population growth would be much faster without any tendency to stop growing. By the year 2050, a population projection based on the four-child assumption shows that Turkey would have 122 million people with a growth rate of 2.4 per cent per year, which would continue indefinitely thereafter into the future.

At present (1995), the rate of growth of the national population is 1.6 per cent per annum. (footnote: Excluding international migration about which information is scarce and incomplete.) It is projected to be 1.4 per cent by the year 2000, and to decline thereafter to approximately 0.0 (zero) at the middle of the next century. These figures about the growth rate are often confused in the public discourse with the total fertility rate -- currently 2.5 children per woman. A growth rate of 1.6 per cent per year for the total population, and a fertility rate of 2.5 children at the present time are completely different things. The latter helps to determine population growth rates, but is certainly not the same as we have seen.

Mr. Koc, a leading industrialist, has advocated the ideal of the "two-child" family ever since the 1970s. The TAP VAKFI (Turkish acronym) which received the prize was a newcomer, and an innovative one. It launched a mass media (TV) campaign on behalf of family planning in 1988, the first ever in Turkey. The foundation also produced a prize-winning film, Berdel, which depicted the folly of men who insist on fathering many children. In addition, the foundation organized a consortium of pharmaceutical companies, placed spots on TV, and promoted the sale of oral contraceptives and condoms in pharmacies all over Turkey. Two model family planning clinics were also opened.

At that time, 1988, total fertility per woman had already fallen from 6.6 children in the 1950s to 3.3 children. By 1994, when the award was made, total fertility was 2.7, and in Istanbul where the foundation had its headquarters, fertility was about 2.0. We think that these measurements are reasonably accurate. (footnote: All measurements in the present paper, except where noted, are from State Institute of Statistics (1995). Readers should look there for documentation of sources and methods.)

The family planners' goals were to persuade more people to use contraceptives and thus to lower fertility. They hoped to see more use of methods of contraception which they describe as "modern methods" in contrast to the principal method used in Turkey, which is withdrawal (coitus interruptus) and is described as "traditional." The results obtained by TAP VAKFI and the participating pharmaceutical companies as a result of their campaigns in the late 1980s and early 1990s are instructive.

There are national surveys every five years in Turkey to measure the prevalence and types of contraceptive practice along with some other subjects related mostly to health. According to these surveys there was no increase (actually a decline) in the use of pills and condoms between 1988 and 1993 (Hacettepe, 1994: 38). The pharmaceutical companies involved in the campaign had higher sales, however. Perhaps they succeeded in gaining a higher market share, or the Hacettepe surveys were not sufficiently accurate.

The most interesting point is that the total fertility rate (TFR) continued to decline. Thus, the contest between the leader of the Refah Party and the family planners is for nothing. The former will get a larger population without the need to do anything about convincing people to have more or less children, and the latter need not address the quantitative problem though they might contribute new alternative means of control and information about their birth control problems that men and women could use. The quantitative goal of the family planners is more or less already reached, at least as an average for Turkey, admitting that some groups have higher and other groups lower fertility.

There is, however, another story. A new public discourse that transforms the family-planning orientation to concerns with the reproductive health of women, mostly, and men, to a lesser extent, begins to be seen. The appropriate question is, how could women and men increase their knowledge and experience of the potentialities and options so far as their sexuality is concerned, and attain a better quality of management for their reproductive health. Could the health services help them in this regard? Finally, it should be asked how marginal groups, such as lower-class social groups and residents of remote regions, could be offered support for the control of fertility, which they are in most instances already doing with some privately-achieved results.

These subjects have not so far attracted much attention from the various actors, probably because of their previous preoccupation with the quantity (prevalence) of contraception, which is supported by the internal culture of the state and private institutions. (footnote: Projects organized in recent years in cooperation with international organizations such as the U.N. Fund for Population, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the European Union, are based on documents that say more family planning (read "medical contraception") is urgently needed because the population is growing at a high rate; 2.5 per cent per annum is a figure often used. This agrees with the diagnosis of the international family planning "industry," and helped to bring projects and funds to Turkey. The point of view does not go away easily, particularly since it is a formula applied to many other third-world countries as well.)

An exercise of agency by individuals who have some power inside the system could redirect attention toward quality, which is a one-word concept to embrace all the new ideas. Some small beginnings are seen in the Ministry of Health, State Planning Organization, and the clinics or foundations staffed by professional family planners. Scholarly attention to these issues is also seen, but it too is in its infancy. (footnote: An exception is the very informative study of the quality abortion services in Istanbul, which also provides incidental findings about other aspects of birth control (Bulut and Toubia, 1994).)

The U. N. Cairo Conference on Population and Development in 1994 offered support for the new emphasis on reproductive health as a broader concept, though family planning remains as a sub-category within reproductive health. Here again is an illustration of the intersection of international and national institutions at the political level. Much will be said and written, but to what effect on Turkish lay culture, and the day to day lives of people remains to be seen.

The fertility and mortality trends reflect momentous changes in the society, and they have important consequences as we shall discuss below. The rise of fertility from 1923 up to its peak in the mid-1930s, which was then sustained with only a small decline during World War II, added children to the population at the 0-4 level of the pyramid. The cohorts of new population (births) had to grow up over many years, following one after the other and rising higher and higher in the pyramid, before the pyramid would lose the scars of the initial Turkish population in 1923. This was substantially accomplished by around the 1960s.

Meanwhile, the decline of mortality (improvement in survival rates at all ages) caused the population to grow rapidly. Population size grew from 13 million in 1923 to 31 million in 1965, and 61 million in 1995. (footnote: Since the last census was held in 1990, the figure for 1995 is an estimate made by population projection.) During the 1950s and 1960s the rate of growth of the national population reached its highest level of 2.8 per cent per year.

The author of this statement obtained the figure from a report by the Hacettepe Institute of Population Studies (1989: 29-30) referring to their national 1988 survey. Unfortunately, there was an error in the methodology for the calculation. The same methodological error was repeated five years later in the 1993 survey report with the same consequences (Hacettepe, 1994: 62). This was very unfortunate, because other data in the Hacettepe report are properly prepared and presented. Even if one does not have an inside knowledge of the demographic literature, general knowledge of social change in Turkey should make one doubt and ask questions.(footnote: Looking closely at the 1993 report, one discovers a table on the marital status of women (Table 6.1) which could be used to calculate a mean age of marriage of 22.4 years. However, the calculation was not made by the Hacettepe demographers. This figure is plotted with a + in the chart.)

The "true" story, calculated from the censuses, is shown in the chart. A preliminary (partial) interpretation of the trends shown there would go as follows: The decline in the age index over the years prior to the 1950s was associated with the recovery of family life after men were released from military service in the 1920s and while labor-intensive agriculture remained the main motor of economic advance for families and the country. That was a period of rising and then sustained high fertility.

The blip for males during the 1940s was due to wartime mobilization of men which took them temporarily out of the marriage market. Thereafter, the rise of the index by four years between the 1950s and the present time signify several changes in the marriage process: the decline in number of early arranged marriages, more time spent on education and negotiation by young persons of their own marriages, and recognition by young persons that economic advance depends on taking time to position one's self to work in urban industrial environments.

The producer group is defined as men and women aged 20-54, including both sexes because women generally work in domestic tasks if not market activities whether recognized in censuses and national accounts or not. The youth are those under age 15 and the elderly are those aged 65 and over. These age categories are a way of drawing attention to the changing structure. They summarize what is also shown in pyramids, but on a historical continuum. They also focus attention on certain periods during the life course of individuals as young people, producers, and elderly.

Prior to the 1980s, an elderly population scarcely existed, because it took many years for the new additions to the population that began in the 1920s to become old enough to enter this age range. With higher life expectancy and the passage of time, this part of the population will become increasingly prominent and a focus for many of the country's population questions. The role of older people in politics, in the labor force to the extent institutional conditions permit them to work, and their demands on private and public health care systems will be important. The question of how to support themselves, through state security institutions or by private family arrangements, will have to be addressed.

Until the 1980s, there was one adult producer (typically a father or mother) for each young person or child under the age of 15. Two bits of demographic history are now causing this relationship to change dramatically; soon there will be two adult producers per person under age 15. Declining fertility has reached the point where the lower age groups are more or less stationary in size; they are being reproduced but not increased in number. The producer group, on the other hand, is growing rapidly. Notice how the curve shows acceleration in the rate, followed by a slowing down in later years.

The potential of parents to make economic and social investments in their offspring has increased. The demographic figures alone show a doubling of this capacity. Any increase in family real incomes adds even more to the potential to invest resources in each child. This bodes well for the future quality of the Turkish population. Parents today, far more than "yesterday," are demanding educational opportunity for their children and are paying the costs of giving them many other options in life in addition. In fact, everyone knows this at the micro demographic level by personal experience and the local culture for children they see around them. Families have re-oriented themselves to lower levels of reproduction with qualitative objectives for themselves and the next generation in mind. We point out that this is a consequence, partly not wholly, of the new relationships between parent and child generations made possible by the demography.

The labor force, on the other hand, is passing through a particularly difficult period if we look at it from the perspective of individuals who require employment. The reason is that this age group is growing so fast. The yearly rate of growth has been rising for some time and reached 3.0 per cent per annum in 1993. This is a peak rate. It will start declining soon, but only slowly, reaching 2.0 per cent by the year 2005. Notice that this age group is experiencing the time-lagged effects of rapid growth at young ages earlier in history when fertility was still high and death rates were declining. It is important not to look at the general rate of growth in the total population which is only about half as fast. The consequences for individuals is that they face more competition in labor markets and can be exploited by tough wage bargaining policies. During the Ozal period (1980s) this is precisely what was happening and part of the reason was demographic.

From the perspective of capitalist enterprises the abundance of labor is a benefit. It was no doubt one of the reasons for the remarkable rates of increase in economic output in the 1980s. For any system of production that is relatively labor intensive, this time period is an opportunity from the perspective of employers; e.g., blue jeans, textile manufactures, tourism, transport, and so on. The 1990s are more problematic, because macro economic policies can support or interfere with the institutional arrangements necessary to make use of the labor option. Turkey's economic troubles of the 1990s seem to have prevented full exploitation of this abundance of labor.

From the state's perspective, labor abundance is also a benefit. It can support an export boom as in the 1980s, or army recruitment as in the 1990s, or both in differing degrees. The three perspectives of labor, employers, and state, will eventually face a change, since the high growth rates of the labor force finally decline, even becoming 0.0 (zero) around 2025. As that change occurs, slowly as is typical with demographic change, a move toward quality and less labor intensive occupations and systems of production should occur. The stimulus just discussed was a one-time package; it won't come again. (footnote: Barlow (1994) notices, as do we, that this type of demographic stimulus weakens and disappears.)

Turkey is not alone in experiencing these opportunities and problems -- the perspective tells which is opportunity and which is problem. The economist, Dowrick (1992), attributes high growth rates in East and Southeast Asia to "declining birth rates (that) provide a temporary but substantial stimulus through this labor force effect." It happened earlier in that region, because the demographic conditions occurred earlier.

A dark side of the picture is the slow progress in raising educational levels in Turkey. This is a drag on the improvement of labor force skills and experience. The slow progress of educational achievement is also related to demographic factors. Until now, demographic growth presented the educational system with rising numbers of persons to educate, and there was a preoccupation with expansion of scale rather than of quality.

The following statistics are useful to assess the progress of education among individuals entering the labor force. They refer to persons when they are aged 20- 24, by which time they should potentially reach at least a high school education level. In 1990, only 28 per cent of males had reached such a level, and 19 per cent of females. Of course, this was better than the situation 20 years earlier in 1970 when the figures were 12 and 6 per cent respectively. Thus, a labor force most of which was poorly educated -- primary school was the typical level -- during those earlier years will improve as it is renewed by young cohorts that enter the labor force with higher educational qualifications.

Population is transferred from rural to urban by (1) actual physical movement of population, and (2) by reclassification when a small place just keeps on growing in size and crosses the boundary definition of 10,000. Pure migration (1) was approximately 670,000 per year during the inter-census period of 1985-1990. At the beginning of the massive internal redistribution from rural to urban which commenced in 1950s, it was 240,000 per year. The figure has been increasing, but seems to be near a maximum at present, after which it will most likely decline. The migration figures are net -- from rural to urban minus from urban to rural.

solid line: Urban
dotted line: Turkey
dashed line: Rural

The largest cities of Turkey, and perhaps smaller ones as well -- we do not know -- already had controlled fertility and low levels of reproduction before the 1950s. One effect of the redistribution of population from agricultural villages and towns to the industrializing cities was to move generations of young adults into the controlled-fertility environment. These generations adopted the lower fertility. We may illustrate by following fertility in Istanbul over time.

Since the cities had controlled fertility -- not Istanbul alone -- the growing proportion urban, which we call urbanization, brought more and more of the population into economic and social contexts where families needed to control fertility in order to survive. This has contributed in the Turkish case to the national fertility decline. We would emphasize that Turkey had its own particular character, with urban centers of low fertility since at least the beginning of the century.

(a) Couples are counted by looking at the number of women who are married (under age 45 in the 1963 data and under age 50 in the 1993 data). We use interpolation between censuses and projection where necessary. The sample surveys show the percentages of couples using each method, which is multiplied by the total number of couples to obtain the figures above.

Sources: 1963 Survey (Ozbay and Shorter, 1970: 5); 1993 Survey (Hacettepe Institute of Population Studies, 1994: 38).

Notice that medical methods of control were simply unavailable and unused at the beginning of the fertility decline (1963 figures). By 1993 they are more important: IUDs and Pills together are 38 per cent of all methods used, but the so-called traditional, or male, methods continue to be the dominant mode; i.e., 52 per cent.

Abortion is also known to have been common for a long time in Turkey, but quantification was not satisfactory. At present, survey data show that 18 per cent of pregnancies are terminated by induced abortion (Hacettepe, 1994: 52-53). The percentage is declining slightly over time, which could be due to many factors, but one of them might be more success at avoiding pregnancy by contraception. Abortion was legalized in 1983, but the opinion of medical providers is that the change in the law had no major influence on its use. The main gain was to mandate the establishment of abortion services in social security and government hospitals and clinics. The law reinforced the power of men in decisions about birth control by requiring a signed consent from the husband for any married woman who requests an abortion.

The main question raised by the bio-demographic perspective is how to interpret the fact that so-called male methods of contraception, withdrawal and condoms, are the most important, both at the beginning and end of the fertility decline. (footnote: The importance of such methods in other countries and contexts is discussed in Santow (1993).)

At the beginning it is not so surprising; little else was possible and fertility had to be controlled. At the present time, however, it is more problematic. If technology is the way to bring about change, why is it not being used more?

All methods generally involve female cooperation no matter whether the application is related medically or mechanically to either the male or female body. The biology of a method does not really tell us "who is in charge," or who (husband or wife or both) is the one acting to keep the number of births to a socially accepted small number. That is a subject which should be addressed by examining the social construction of gender roles and birth control, and by placing the construction in an appropriate context. It belongs to the domain of cultural analysis to which we will come below.

The other four regions of Turkey, defined by the State Institute of Statistics as south, central, north, and west, have each one experienced declines of 50 to 60 per cent, which is a bit more than the decline (proportionately) for the East. However, there does not seem to me to be enough difference in the speed of decline to construct a special theory that would say that the East is a special case. No doubt in all the regions the way in which the declines have taken place differ in details, but transition theory is not much concerned with this kind of variation. Social scientists who apply one or more of the cultural perspectives are more likely to be concerned with such variation.