The period of global neo-liberalisation has an essential restructuring agenda of diminishing
social rights. The process of capital accumulation process has deepened
‘conventional’ social problems, while new ones have emerged. In the present circumstances,
in which the status quo is determined by these two contradictory tendencies,
identifying the societal functions of social rights through observational and
empirical research is extremely important for Turkey. This article utilises the theoretical
tools developed by Esping-Andersen, which were developed on the basis of
Polanyi's convention that social rights may be understood as rights limiting the
commodity character of labour (decommodification). According to this assumption,
the elimination of social rights is conceptualised as the enhancement of the dependency
of labour on the market (recommodification). The purpose of this article is
to examine the quantifiable social effects of the deepening deterioration of social
rights in Turkey on the basis of the right to work in healthy and safe conditions,
which forms the backbone of other social rights.