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• Discouraged persons,
• Nomads,
• Other disadvantaged persons as appropriate (i.e. drug addicts, victims of domestic
violence, parents of working children, temporary/seasonal workers especially in
agriculture, children who are implicated in a crime and their families),
• Employers and other employees at the workplace,
• Staff of İŞKUR, other relevant institutions and NGOs.
5.7 Description of the Operation and background:
According to the 2009 Poverty Study conducted by TURKSTAT based on Household Budget
Survey results, poverty rate is 18, 08 percent, which corresponds to 12.7 million people, in
Turkey. Poverty is more widespread in rural areas (38, 69 percent) than in urban areas (8, 86
percent). Poverty increases with household size and especially with the number of dependent
children and decreases as education level increases. Parallel to the cross-country evidence,
poverty rate is the lowest (6, 05 percent) among wage/salary earners and the highest among the
unemployed (19, 51 percent).
Although poverty is closely related with social exclusion, social exclusion represents a more
comprehensive approach where both monetary and non-monetary factors are taken into
consideration. For instance, although a poor person is more likely to be socially excluded, a
socially excluded person does not have to be poor. An example may be a disabled person who is
socially excluded due to reasons other than poverty (such as physical reasons, prejudices against
them or having less chances in life due to low access to education). Thus, it may be argued that
social exclusion has a wider perspective than monetary poverty in explaining people’s living
conditions and difficulties that they face.
Therefore, by and large, target groups of this Operation are those who are poor, at risk of poverty
and/or socially excluded. Although the needs of target groups referred in section 5.6 above
differ, it is well known that common characteristics of all disadvantaged persons are being poor
or at risk of poverty resulted primarily by low chances of being employed, living in gecekondu
areas, working in unregistered and/or temporary jobs and having low education and skills.
Therefore, active labour market policies that would support their access to labour market should
be at the centre of an attempt to ensure their inclusion in the social life. Unlike other unemployed
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