By Bahattin Gonultas
ANKARA
"Wanted: Easy lifestyle, without too much work, and solid job security." Turkish young people are increasingly seeking public sector jobs.
With the encouragement of the Turkish education system, a growing percentage of Turkey's young people are choosing to work in the public sector, because it demands less hard work and efficiency than the private sector.
"I need to work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and have solid job security," says Erkan Isik, 26, one of the 100,000 government employees hired this year.
Erkan Ceyhun, 32, has been working in public sector for the past seven years: "I used to work at a private construction company as a civil engineer. I moved to the public sector, because I wanted to get married, but my father-in-law would not give me permission to marry his daughter, as he said there wasn't enough job security in the private sector."
Ceyhun regretted the higher salary he earned in working for a private company, but added that he is now happily married.
Nearly 3.42 million people in Turkey work for the public sector, amounting to about five percent of the country’s population.
According to the Turkish Statistical Institute, and the Finance Ministry, public employment increased by 3.7 percent in the first nine months of this year, compared with the same period of last year.
The Turkish government spent approximately $38 billion on its employees in the fiscal year 2013 — a price tag that makes employee payments that year the government’s largest expenditure, according to the data given by the Finance Ministry. The number of government jobs is also growing.
Turkey is faced with an unemployment rate of 10.1 percent as of August 2014. So it is not surprising that the Turkish Confederation of Employer Association welcomes increasing employment in the public sector.
"However we should question the reasons why young people are moving to the public sector," the confederation said in statement to The Anadolu Agency.
"It is well known that private sector concepts of efficiency, competition and qualification are less required in public sector. The new generation prefers to work in an environment where they can work less, they can use social media and they have direct access to information," the statement said.
But young people should realize that employment opportunities and the job creation capacity of the public sector is limited, the spokesman pointed out. "It is essential to create employment in the private sector. The authorities should remove obstacles to job creation by the private sector," the statement said.
"Turkey needs to reconsider this situation, its education system as well as required professional capacity," the statement said.
Ilhan Erdal, president of the Ankara branch of Turkey's Independent Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association, agreed that young people choose public sector to have an easy lifestyle.
Halis Yunus Ersoz, dean of the school of economics at Istanbul University explained that the public sector offers training opportunities.
“Expert and assistant expert positions in the public sector provide opportunities like career education, and that is attracting the young to public sector," Ersoz said. "The private sector in the country needs to cooperate more with the public sector to educate its workforce with, for example, apprenticeships and on-the-job training."
Ersoz noted that, paradoxically, the public sector is growing in Turkey, while in many developed economies the role of the state is being reduced. What is happening is that the government is offering more services than it did previously, Ersoz explains. "There are some fields in Turkey in which the state did not previously provide services, such as social services, consulting, psychology."
But not all young people are headed for government jobs. Safak Aslantas, 28, has a degree in accounting and has been working in a private company since 2008. “If you want to work in public sector, you need to take many exams. That is not for me. I am very productive in the private sector, and that is good for my income,” she said.
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