Public policy and media in Turkey

This chapter addresses the different roles played by the mass media in its relationship with policymaking within the Turkish case, including agenda-setting, framing and the panoptical reflected by public policy. Based on Pierre Bourdieu's field theory, this chapter demonstrates that media as a semi-autonomous field can reflect and refract public policy with respect to varying conditions and argues in particular that this role depends on the level of consolidation of the governmental power, the ideological positioning of the media outlet, and the issue area under discussion. Methodologically, a template is established for a media content analysis of the Turkish media and its role in policymaking. This template has been implemented by collecting data across five different Turkish newspapers between 1995-2013 as a framework for future studies and the analysis confirms the expectations.

Policy-making at local level: an analysis of Turkish municipalities

Turkish local governments have undergone a radical transformation since the 1980s. Accompanied by a rhetoric of decentralising and democratising reforms, related legal changes have been criticised in the light of either nationalist or democratic, participatory concerns. At the heart of such important waves of legal reforms lay the municipalities as the main service provider in urban settings. This chapter presents a general overview of the state of policy analysis in Turkish municipalities. It argues that municipalities governed by very strong executives, prioritise populist services delivered through subcontracts and controlled weakly by political and civil actors and arbitrarily by the central government. The classical public policy cycle approach will inform the discussion.

‘Boomerang effect’: the bottleneck of public policy analysis in Turkey

This chapter seeks to explain the poor performance of public policy tools in Turkey through strategic planning and performance auditing utilising the “boomerang effect” concept mainly used in communication studies. For this analysis the study follows the steps of the heuristic public policy cycle model. After clarifying the transfer process of strategic planning and performance auditing to the Turkish administrative system, the study focuses on the implementation of these policy tools. Demonstrating the poor performance of these tools with reference to some empirical studies, the chapter discusses four reasons of non-implementation of policy tools, namely the exposure of political power to public scrutiny, Turkish administrative culture, lack of domestic contribution and the leverage power of international and regional organizations.

The past, present and future of policy analysis in Turkey

This chapter summarizes the history of policy analysis in Turkey beginning with the Ottoman Empire and tracing the developments in the era of the Turkish Republic until the early 21st century. After a review of the history, the chapter assesses the current state of policy analysis education, research, and application in Turkey, before concluding that policy analysis and policy studies in Turkey have come a long way, but also have a long way to go. The chapter makes the observation that advanced theories and methods are not covered in most of the courses in policy analysis and policy studies, many of the publications are descriptive, and the legal requirements for public agencies to use analyses in their decision-making practices have not been implemented fully. The chapter recommends that Turkish governments should apply advanced analytical methods and all stakeholders should participate to public policymaking.

Policy analysis in civil society organisations

This chapter is mainly concerned with providing a concise synopsis of the state of civil society in Turkey and an overview of the decision-making processes at civil society organizations (CSOs) by combining data from various empirical studies. The chapter begins with a discussion of the roots of weak civil society in Turkey followed by an illustration of the current state of civil society as a space. The chapter will then examine policy analysis practices in CSOs with a focus on prevalent decision making structures and the role of external funds in addition to agenda setting and evaluation processes. The chapter concludes by arguing that CSOs in Turkey are still yet to become effective implementers of policy analysis tools.

Beyond developmentalism: the role of experts and expertise in Turkey’s environmental policy disputes

Although perceptions about expertise in the policy process and its legitimacy has changed over time, environmental policy is a contested policy area with a variety of policy disputes between experts who inform competing policy positions. The distinguished position of experts in the policy process faces a new challenge as lay people and a new breed of embedded experts take dominant interest policy positions in a number of policy disputes. In post-truth situations, it is not expertise but the way one articulates a position that matters. Re-centralisation of policy processes and the predominance of particular economic interests in policy processes sideline experts who are supposed to enlighten the process in the name of common good. The continual sidelining of expert opinions, including that of professional chambers and predominance of developmentalist discourses characterize environmental policy processes in Turkey. Experts from a variety of public authorities are bypassed to enable environmentally risky development projects without much deliberation, despite experts’ opposition on the grounds of environmental, ecological, economic and social infeasibility of such projects. Embedded experts have been available for most of the occasions and use of environmental discourses has been a common feature of legitimization process.

Territorial policy-making and administrative reform in Turkey

This chapter provides an explanation of public administration reform in Turkey, and an overview of points of discussion and recent policy trends in local administrations. The chapter will examine the fundamental transformation of the Turkish State alongside public policies that directly impact local administrations, such as consolidation, decentralization, metropolisation and regionalisation. Through this perspective Turkish public administration, recent policy frameworks and the structural transformation of institutions will be explained. The chapter will go on to examine how public policies are designed in local administrations and how public policies have transformed the central administration-local administration relations.

Public policy education in Turkey

This chapter examines the development and current state of public policy education in Turkey, based on the teaching of the subject in political science and public administration departments. The chapter analyses and explains the conditions under which public policy classes - among other relevant developments - have emerged and evolved over time, and the motivations of the faculty to introduce, develop and maintain public policy courses. To this end, studies on the teaching of public policy in the political science and public administration departments in Turkish universities at undergraduate and graduate levels are reviewed. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the current and future challenges facing public policy education in Turkey, and recommendations for addressing these challenges.

Policy analysis and capacity in the Central Bank of Turkey

This chapter examines policy capacity and policy analysis in the context of the Central Bank’s role in policy design and implementation that relates to macroeconomic and financial stability in Turkey. Specifically, it focuses on agency-level (i.e. individual and organisational) complementarities that relate to the Bank’s policy capacity. These are related to the Bank’s knowledge and expertise, human capital, recruitment, and career development prospects, its ability to collect and analyse data, its formal organisation and departments related to policy analysis, its organisational culture emphasising measured risk taking in policy design and implementation (see also Bakir, 2007, 2012a) and its policy entrepreneurship linking its bureaucratic agenda with governmental agenda due mainly to its strong analytical, operational and political capacity. This chapter argues that proactive behaviour in monetary policy design and implementation is most likely when a central bank has strong analytical, operational and political policy capacity.

Policy analysis in Turkey’s central government: current practices and future challenges

Turkey has witnessed a comprehensive transformation in its political-administrative structure and policy making actors since the 1980s, at which point Turkey started to pull away from its traditional ‘transcendental state’ tradition. While the central government expanded, especially within the prime ministry, and became a policy making centre, the external dynamics resulted in the creation of independent regulatory organisations, privatisation policies, NPM reforms and decentralisation. However, the dynamics of internal politics came to the fore and the referendum that was passed for the direct election of the president by the people in 2007 brought radical changes to the ministerial system in 2011, structured around the prime ministry. The adoption of a presidential government system in principle strengthened the central government again, triggering discussions on ‘re-centralisation’. In this chapter, the policy actors and dynamics that have been influential in the post-1980 period at the central government level in Turkey are examined from a constitutional-institutional perspective, transformations caused by administrative reforms in the field of policy making are evaluated and finally the transformation and challenges facing the presidential system and central government are analysed.