Big social security deficits have long haunted Turkey, especially in times of economic turmoil. The problem has now resurged amid an economic recession since last year, with the Social Security Institution (SGK) placing an ever growing burden on the central government budget. 

Yet tracking the state of affairs at the SGK has become rather difficult, for the agency has stopped publishing its monthly statistical bulletins since January in what is widely considered to be a blackout. As a result of the information cut, key data on employees and workplaces, healthcare services and the number of those without any social security as well as the agency’s revenues, spending and deficits have remained inaccessible for more than seven months, fueling suspicions that the authorities are trying to conceal the figures.

The SGK’s revenues are as much as half of the central government budget, and the agency is the recipient of the largest support from that budget. The SGK, which serves about 70 million citizens, among them insured employees, pensioners and their dependents, has some of Turkey’s most extensive databases, including the largest database on registered employment. The data collection relies on a long-established mechanism whereby employers notify the SGK of newly hired and departing employees electronically. The agency has more than 33,000 staff members and sufficient equipment, so administrative or technical excuses could hardly explain the delay in sharing its data. 

Aziz Celik, a scholar of labor economics and a columnist for BirGun, has insistently questioned the issue, prompting a lawmaker from the main opposition party, Murat Bakan, to formally ask the SGK under Turkey's right to information law why it has stopped releasing monthly data. In its reply in June, the agency said that work was underway “to update monthly SGK statistical bulletins, both in terms of content and format” so as to bring them in line with international standards and ensure greater transparency and accountability. “Concealing or delaying data is out of the question,” it said.