ISTANBUL
Turkey faces the prospect of a problem common to most European countries, according to its national statistical institute -- an aging population.
In the last year, the number of live births and fertility rate has decreased, while the number of people over 65 has risen.
Turkey's Statistical Institute, or TurkStat, revealed in April that the fertility rate decreased to 2.14 children in 2015, from 2.18 children in 2014. It was 2.37 in 2001.
The number of live births also decreased by almost 20,000, from 1,345,286 in 2014 to 1,325,783 in 2015, according to TurkStat.
The total fertility rate represents the ratio between the average number of live births in a year and the number that a woman would have during her childbearing years (15-49 age group) -- not to be mistaken with the birth rate, which shows the number of babies per 1,000 of a population.
"Turkey is one of the fastest aging countries in the world," says Didem Danis, an associate professor of the Sociology Department of Galatasaray University in Istanbul.
Danis underlined that Turkey was at risk of rapid aging with the elderly population increasing significantly in past decades.
According to TurkStat in 2014, in 2023, 10.2 percent of the Turkish population will be made up of people aged 65 years and over - a rate that was 7.7 percent in 2013.
Turkey currently stands at 8.2 percent in 2015, according to TurkStat.
Sociologist Sami Sener, the head of the department of Sociology at Sakarya University, in northwestern Turkey, believes that the country does not currently face a serious aging issue, when compared to the Western countries,
"It could face Europe's fate in 20 years if the decrease in the fertility rate is not prevented,” he notes. "Therefore, Turkey should take immediate precautions and strengthen economic and social policies to encourage more births."
The government has indeed been trying to come up with incentives.
"One or two children mean bankruptcy. Three children mean we are not improving but not receding either. So, I repeat, at least three children are necessary in each family, because our population risks aging," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said at the International Family and Social Policies Summit in Ankara in 2013.
The government currently hands out 300 Turkish liras ($102) for a married couple's first child, 400 liras ($136) for the second and 600 liras ($205) for the third one to encourage working women to have more children.
The government also plans to have part-time work be paid in full for mothers, following their 16-week maternity leave.
Danis believes the effect of those incentives would be limited.
"These efforts are not enough to increase fertility rate numbers and the government does not support families enough, for instance it does not provide day nurseries," she says.
Fertility rate may be the highest in African countries, but it is also high in Sweden and France thanks to government support, Danis said.
According to the CIA World Factbook, in 2014, Niger ranked first in fertility rate with 6.89 while Turkey ranked 113 with 2.08 percent, after France, among other 223 countries.
However, sociologist Sami Sener points to women working full-time as a cause for lower fertility rates.
"I believe that this issue could be solved by moving ahead with a part-time working system for women," he says.
Stressing the importance of family life and the time needed to spend with children, he suggested that women avoid intense work pressure.
Danis cites urbanization, modernization and economic development as the main reasons for the decrease in fertility rates in Turkey.
"In cities, people consider children as an expense," she says.
Danis adds that as individualization has increased with modernization, solidarity based on family has begun to dissolve.
She notes however that as a country became more economically developed, its fertility rate had a tendency to decrease.
She says that refugees living in Turkey could help solve this issue.
Turkey hosts nearly 3 million Syrian refugees, according to the UN Refugee Agency. More than 1 million of them are Syrian children, according to the Directorate General of Migration Management of Turkish Interior Ministry.
"In Europe, the fertility rate of the settled population was lower than migrants’," she adds.
Sener also says that certain European countries were trying to solve the fertility rate issue by taking in migrants.
For instance, Germany’s 2014 fertility rate of 1.47 children per woman was below the EU average, according to the Destatis data, the Federal Statistical Office of Germany.
A 2015 study from think tank Bertelsmann Foundation showed that Germany's population shrinking and aging. According to the study, the number of people of working age was feared to decrease from 45 million to 29 million by 2050.
Last year, Germany accepted nearly 1.1 million asylum seekers.
