National and international actors in healthcare interpreting and interpreting in educational settings in Turkey

Abstract

This study explores how community interpreting services have developed in Turkey’s healthcare and education sectors in response to the large-scale displacement triggered by the Syrian conflict. It investigates how national and international actors collaborate to shape linguistic access across these public services. The study adopts a qualitative multiple case study design and applies Mencütek’s meta-governance framework to analyse policy documents, institutional reports and media resourc­es, complemented by the author’s experience as a community interpreter trainer. The findings sug­gest that healthcare interpreting has become relatively formalized under the Ministry of Health through hierarchical coordination and the EU-funded project SIHHAT, whereas education relies on more decentralized, project-based interpreting service provision initiatives involving NGOs and UNICEF. This analysis highlights the difference in the governance models reflected in distinct mod­els of interpreting services. The study contributes to refugee governance and interpreting studies by underlining the need for sustainable, cross-sector collaboration in public service interpreting.