An Assessment of The Turkish Disability Act in View of Social Model

The medical model as a trouble approach in disability literature characterizes disabled status to be “amenable to treatment, capable of improvement or illness”. The main viewpoint of the model is to assess people with disabilities who are unwell / sick. The new –social- model has described disability as a result of community’s affirmative-reaction since the 1950’s and 1960’s. In this context a person with a disability is exposed to biased opinions of other people or society. Therefore the social model focuses on the problematic exclusive reactions against people with disabilities. Turkey has taken a keen interest in social policy applications and legal regulation(s) for people with disabilities since the second half of the 1990’s, for instance, forming the Administration of Disabled People (1997), holding the 1st National Disabled People’s Council (1999), and introducing the Turkish Disability Act (2005). The purpose of this study is to determine implications of the social model approach for the Turkish Disability Act. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that the Act has a synthesis–approach.