Turkey’s Interest Group Politics Revisited: How Do Three Business Associations Fare in Influencing Media, Education and Gender Policies?

This paper will examine the different degrees of policy influence that business interest groups in Turkey have over media, education and gender policies. A wealth of scholarship supports that Turkey’s candidacy to the European Union galvanized interest group formation and thereby urged Turkey to replace its corporatist-clientelist policy bargaining tradition with a complex and increasingly pluralist environment for interest representation. However capable, powerful, financially stable and professional Turkey’s modern business associations and umbrella organizations might be, they continue to remain divided across ideological lines. Therefore, their influence on policymaking across issues and sectors are still not easily discernable. As Turkey grapples with the simultaneous processes of Europeanization, liberalization and global integration (which also includes its growing interest in and appetite for engagement with the MENA region), it presents an excellent site for research on the future of interest group influence. This paper suggests that combining the issue-, sector- and group-level analyses of business interest groups of opposing convictions/identities yields a clearer assessment of whether and to what extent those business associations achieve in informing and shaping policies. The author will present three case studies to the panel: The first will focus on Turkey’s media sector, which is directly relevant to the theme “Interest Group Influence in an Era of Multi-Level Governance and Mediatisation” and has a deeper level of integration with the larger European market, and discuss the policy positions advocated by three business interest groups, TUSIAD, MUSIAD, and TUSKON. The second case will observe the policy-based communication and outreach of the three-abovementioned associations on gender policies in Turkey, particularly on gender equality in the workplace. The third case will analyze education policy as an area and discuss the specific policy positions of the three associations on national education, and particularly on basic (k12) education, in Turkey. On each case, the author will investigate connections between how the interest group members negotiated their positions on three specific policy ends, i.e. an anticipated change in legislation or a favourable financial or economic development in the sector concerned, with their fellow association members or the leadership of the association and then compare the intra-group dynamics across the three associations. In three of the case studies to be presented, the author will address the broader issue of legal/administrative changes towards democratization. Though rhetorically, an overwhelming majority of business interest groups in Turkey supports democratization and a reform agenda in line with the EU accession criteria, in practice any one of the three organizations may redefine or detract from their commitment to democratization at times. Thus, the issue of democratization via legal/administrative change will be treated as a benchmark against which the performance of three associations across sectors and groups will be assessed. Ultimately, the paper will argue that though no single business association out-competes others in policy bargaining in Turkey, by mediatizing or publicizing their policy positions alongside or together with their ideological, cultural and value-based positions, Muslim conservative associations attract more public and political recognition. The paper will rely on primary data collected as part of two independent research projects, run by the author for TESEV – a think tank in Istanbul, and as well on in-depth interviews with members of the abovementioned business associations between 2009 and 2010. The author will also review material published by the three associations, statements broadcasted or published by the three associations, relevant newspaper and journal articles, and broader literature on business-state relations in Turkey, Europe and the world.