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Breakpoint model application to Turkish population growth

points out that the population momentum shows the difference’s effects between actual and inherited growth rates of the
final size of the stationary population, or the path to steady increase. Populations whose fertility is significantly below
replacement level and whose age distribution did not have time to fully adjust to the new fertility regime will tend to have
high values of unstable momentum (Espenshade, Olgiati, and Levin, 2011). It is expected that the population in areas with
a rapid ageing process will have a natural growth under effect of the general mortality rate, that is, will gradually increase
even if the general rate of birth is stable. Migrations are often considered as the key factor of POPG or decline at a regional
or at a country level making an influence on population change of the regions or countries where migration happens. As an
especially significant kind of movement, in the reasoning of Ediev and Yüceşahin (2016), migrations could be considered
in two aspects. As argued from a pure demographic standpoint, migration component jointly with natural increase
determines the extent and POPG rate. Differently from the purely demographic standpoint, the second aspect refers to the
impact of migrations on population change usually at two places: The origin and destination of the migration movement.
Especially in places with clearly visible regional fertility differences, largely in low fertility regions, migration may be a
driver to compensate for lower births (Ediev and Yüceşahin, 2016). As a consequence, the region of destination may offset
for its POPG. Furthermore, Lee (2011) explains that international migration could have an indirect effect on POPG at the
global level and that it undoubtedly does affect POPG in many more developed countries, where low fertility in any other
way would cause a population decrease. As a matter of fact, immigration is sometimes considered as a means to reduce
population aging. In line with this, Lee (2011) adds further that it is more difficult to make predictions of net immigration
than for fertility or mortality, because indeed immigration is more sensitive to differences in economic growth, political
and military disruption, and policy changes. This study attempts to find an answer to the question whether and how much
the POPG change in Türkiye varies as a consequence of observations of its key determinants within a breakpoint model
for the period 1965 – 2021. Starting from June 2022, Turkey was replaced by Türkiye as its official name. Thus, the aim
of this paper is to consider the breakpoint model as capable of capturing the structural changes of the POPG for Türkiye.
One of the reasons for specifying the initial period in 1965 for our research work is to say that the period between 1968
and 1971 in Türkiye was interesting for a lot of reasons. Thus, prior this period, there was not such a rising social protest
initiated by students, workers, farmers, teachers, and administrative workers. It is considered that there was not enough
interest for these social movements by the academic experts and the extant literature. Namely, the research paper of Alper
(2010) attempted to provide mostly a political clarification for the social protests of 1968 – 1971. Thus, his explanation
suggests that the shift in the balance of power of political groups has led to a prolonged elite conflict between the Kemalist
bureaucracy and the center-right political elite, which has provided significant opportunities to under-represented groups
to organize and raise their voices. In this regard, Pekesen (2014) adds that as in other countries in the world, during the
1960s, Türkiye also experienced substantial social changes, mass mobilization, and many-sided forms of public protests.
The fast pace urbanization and the migration from rural regions to the industrial cities beginning in the 1950s changed
severely the structure of society and the political environment as well. Consequently, the state and its weak social welfare
system have not been able to manage unemployment and widespread poverty. Governments in the 1960s in Türkiye and
opposition parties such as the Republican People Party were obviously not able to respond to the growing dissatisfaction
and deprivation among considerable important parts of the population (Pekesen, 2014). As a second reason for choosing
this period is that during this period, Türkiye was already covered with the second demographic transition, when the
fertility rate reached a high level and the mortality rate decreased (Figure 1).
Overall, our findings represent an important contribution in POPG dynamics relative to Türkiye. Therefore, somehow
related to the previous sentence, the actual motivation for doing this research is expanding the empirical research with
inclusion of the breakpoint methodology to explore the changes in POPG for Türkiye. The rest of the research paper is
organized in the following way: Section 1.1. defines the theoretical background of this research study and Section 1.2.
introduces the trend and development of the POPG in Türkiye. Furthermore, Section 2 shows the data and methods
approach. Section 3 presents the practical results of the application of the breakpoint model for Türkiye, while in Section
4, the gained results are discussed. Section 5 provides conclusions.
1.1. Theoretical background

During the process of demographic transition, populations change from a condition of high levels of mortality and fertility
to a context with low levels of mortality and fertility (Lee, 2011). The “classic” demographic transition or also known
as first demographic transition makes reference to the past events of decreases in mortality and fertility, seen since the
18 century ahead in some of the European populations and with continuity until the present time in most of the developing
th
societies (Lesthaeghe, 2014). Hence, the first demographic transition is supposed to finish when there will be an older
stationary population that will correspond with replacement fertility, that is, 2.1 children on average, with zero POPG,

24 International Journal of Population Studies | 2021, Volume 7, Issue 1