The AKP’s Strategy to Politicize the Turkish Foreign Policy System: Achievements, Limits and Resistance

This presentation is an attempt to understand what are the consequences of growing authoritarianism on public policy making in Turkey. Turkish foreign policy, as other public policy, is a fascinating site to observe the government strategy to concentrate the state power by bypassing bureaucracies and developing its own politicized policy networks since 2010. By studying the case of foreign policy, we will try to seize how the AKP government has tried to limit the role of Turkish bureaucracy in order to gain weight in the decision making process and how this politicization process sparkled controversies, reactions and resistances – yet limited. First, we are going to see how the creation and the development of state agencies directly affiliated to the Prime Ministry like the Turkish Agency for Cooperation and Development (TIKA), the Coordination for Public Diplomacy (KDD) or the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB) empowered the government on foreign policy issues. The development of these centralized institutions enabled the AKP government to promote its own policy networks and to make resources circulate within these networks. Secondly, the way the AKP government push for reforms within the ministry of foreign affairs (MFA) highlights the government will to politicize the nomination of diplomat abroad, but also within this ministry which is much known for its attachment to kemalism and secular values. However, this process has encountered resistances within the MFA and the government’s growing authoritarianism pushed some diplomats to engage in politics against the ruling party.