The Role of Compulsory Education Policy on the Elimination of Child Labour Issue in Turkey

The issue of child labour can be encountered in almost every country. However, the issue currently has been growing particularly in developing countries. In relation to this subject, not only governments but also supranational organizations such as the ILO, UNICEF and EU take place in order to eliminate child labour. Even sometimes, projects are developed so as to be implemented by various countries and governments are orientated for the implementation of these projects, financial support and/or every so often qualified experts are provided, some countries are forced through a variety of sanctions in order to solve the problem by these organizations. At this point, the status of a candidate country to the European Union Turkey emerges as a striking example. Besides, Turkey is determined for this work because ILO's and IPEC program implemented in Turkey from 1990 to 2007. In addition, the example of Turkey is selected to examine the issue since the period of compulsory education was increased from 5 years to 8 years by changing the education policy of compulsory education in 1997. Furthermore, the period of compulsory education has been gradually increased to 12 years in 2013 in Turkey. However, this is outside of this paper since data is provided as quinquennially, thus, working data is not available to approach to the issue. This may be considered in another study. According to literature and ILO's reports, education policies should be intended for reducing child labour. Education policies such as starting primary education at a certain age and the continuum of this education performed by governments have been accepted as precautions aimed at reducing child labour. The aim of this paper is to elucidate whether this increased period of compulsory education can be one of the main element to eliminate child labour. In this context, the general conditions of child labour will be evaluated in this work by comparing the period 1994 that is before the increase compulsory education from 5 years to 8 years and observed data after this changed education policy. As methodology, secondary data obtained from previous statistical and published reports is used. Gaining a new source of literature in this field is attempted by using the example of Turkey. Consequently, the effect of the increased period of compulsory education will be investigated to reduce child labour by analysing results. In this context, also encountered problems and solutions to these problems will be presented.