INSURANCE COOPERATION: TURKEY PRACTICE

Insurance is a social solidarity mechanism. The Cooperatives are partnerships which are established in order to protect and strengthen the economical benefits of their partners, and which accordingly put the cooperation, solidarity and security functions among the partners in practice within the principle of “reciprocity”. Both insurance and the cooperative systems are similar models in which the problems are aimed to be solved mutually and reciprocally in social and economical solidarity by having individual powers coming together. The common point where insurance and cooperative system intersect within this frame is the mutual insurance. The mutual insurance is an insurance agreement which relies on the principle of getting group members, which carry on commercial activities on the same field, to be each other’s insurers, and "in the event of a damage, to afford the damage from the fund which is established by the contributions of the group members. "Mutuality" which reveals the basic characteristic feature of mutual insurance means that contributors contributing premiums to the insurance fund for their joint interests, have the right both to obtain a surplus arising as a result of the insurance activity and to claim damages. In our country, it is preferred to carry on the mutual insurance under the "cooperative" institutional structuring. This study touched in brief upon the current situation of the insurance cooperative system in which mutual insurance activity is carried out in our country