Psychology as a profession in Turkey: current state and challenges

Professional psychology, especially clinical psychology has become vastly popular in Turkey over the last three decades. Both the demand for education to be a professional psychologist and services professional psychologists provide have grown rapidly. In this chapter, we present the current state of psychology as a profession together with the opportunities and challenges for the field. The lack of comprehensive legislation encompassing the practice of psychology in all applied fields poses a critical challenge. With the exception of some partial legislation defining a clinical psychologist, the psychological practices are still left unregulated. There is an urgent need for quality assurance systems such as accreditation for post-graduate programs and establishment of standards for psychological testing and assessment. We argue that, consistent with the scientist-practitioner model, Turkish psychologists need to urgently focus on the ways and means of developing standards of professional services and quality control mechanisms.