Turkey is facing a number of human capital development (HCD) challenges. Most notably, these relate to: ensuring sustainable development (including high growth rates that are sustainable and inclusive); managing the economic transformation from low to medium and advanced technology as well as from a middle- to a high-income country; increasing productivity and tackling the impact of automation; mitigating the urban-rural divide in an increasingly urbanised society; providing opportunities for both a young population and also a growing number of adults to reskill and upskill in the context of the fourth industrial revolution; and dealing with the large number of refugees and migrants living in the country.
Most of these issues point to the necessity of having a more highly skilled, flexible and continuously educated and trained workforce. However, while some current policies seem to be effectively supporting HCD (e.g. improving early years education), others appear to have little or no effect. For example, the recent decline in initial VET participation – despite the government policy of promoting VET – poses the risk of shrinking the supply of skills available to the job market. In addition, the stagnating and comparatively limited opportunities for adult learning contrast with the ambitious goals of economic transformation in Turkey. The high and increasing rate of youth unemployment, the skills mismatch of VET graduates and the integration of a large number of migrants into the working population, mainly operating in the informal economy, need to be addressed by new and stronger policies that are more sharply focused and capable of producing actionable results within a relatively short timescale.