Occupational Health and Safety Performance of Turkey: An Overview of Current Trends

Occupational health and safety issues are one of the most important issues of the working life for Turkey as well as for the entire world. With the developing industrial activities, the working population is increasing day by day, and accordingly, there is an increase in the accident rates at workplaces. According to the latest estimates of the International Labor Organization (ILO), every year 2.78 million employees die from work accidents and diseases in the world, and 374 million employees are exposed to non-fatal work accidents. Again, according to ILO, the numbers of both work accidents and occupational diseases tend to increase from year to year. Occupational health and safety practices aim to minimize the accidents and occupational diseases that occur in the workplaces by adapting the working conditions to human beings. According to official data in Turkey, approximately 400 thousand accidents have been recorded in recent years and an average of 1500 employees died due to work accidents. Even though these data are supported by laws regarding occupational safety in our country, it still maintains its importance as a very important problem. In this study, the data of 2019 work accidents and occupational diseases published by the Social Security Institution (SSI) were analyzed to draw attention to this important problem. Moreover, Turkey's OSH performance was compared with Germany and Japan from various angles. Finally, various suggestions have been developed to solve the problem.