The making of disability as a negotiated social category: welfare, medical authority, and citizenship in Turkey, 1930s–1960s

This article investigates the emergence of disability as a social category within Turkey’s twentieth-century social policy. The existing literature predominantly focuses on the post-1980 period; however, it addresses a significant historical gap by analyzing how disability was constructed as both a medical and a contested civil category between the 1930s and 1960s. Drawing on archival documents, parliamentary debates, and personal petitions, it examines how recognizing disability became central to social policy and how medical authority shaped access to social rights. Ultimately, it argues that Turkey’s welfare regime – marked by medical paternalism and selective state intervention – reveals the contested negotiation between citizens and the state that characterizes the evolution of social rights in a non-Western contexts.