Turf Wars in Foreign Policy Bureaucracy: Rivalry between the Government and the Bureaucracy in Turkish Foreign Policy

Berkay Gülen, Turf Wars in Foreign Policy Bureaucracy: Rivalry between the Government and the Bureaucracy in Turkish Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy Analysis, Volume 18, Issue 4, October 2022, orac021, https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/orac021

Abstract

This paper, using examples from Turkish foreign policy between 2002 and 2014, argues that the fragmentation in foreign policymaking due to adopting different foreign policy ideas, that is, ideas of the elected leadership and the bureaucracy, is likely to generate competition between the state agencies that constitute the foreign policy bureaucracy. If there is backlash in the bureaucracy to realize the government's revisionist foreign policy goals, then the government aims to transform the bureaucracy by empowering certain small bureaucratic units, that is, missionary agencies. Once the degree of conflict between the government and the bureaucracy becomes severe, then the elected officials opt to work with the established bureaucratic agencies to speed up the decision-making processes. The analysis based on a series of interviews conducted with sixty-one Turkish foreign policymakers shows that the turf war in the foreign policy bureaucracy is a conceptual framework for comprehending how elected officials use bureaucratic tactics to undermine the involvement of bureaucrats in decision-making processes. Finally, the study contributes to current debates on populism and the presidentialization of foreign policy by showing that the foreign policy bureaucracy is not immune from the anti-elite, anti-establishment rhetoric of governments.

Utilizando ejemplos de la política exterior turca entre 2002 y 2014, este artículo argumenta que es probable que la fragmentación en la elaboración de la política exterior debido a la adopción de diferentes ideas de política exterior, es decir, ideas de los dirigentes elegidos y de la burocracia, genere competencia entre los organismos estatales que constituyen la burocracia de la política exterior. Si se registra alguna repercusión en la burocracia para alcanzar los objetivos revisionistas de la política exterior del gobierno, este se propone transformar la burocracia empoderando, al efecto, ciertas pequeñas unidades burocráticas como, por ejemplo, las agencias misioneras. Cuando el grado de conflicto entre el gobierno y la burocracia se agrava, los funcionarios elegidos optan por colaborar con los organismos burocráticos establecidos para acelerar los procesos de toma de decisiones. El análisis, basado en una serie de entrevistas realizadas a 61 responsables de la política exterior turca, muestra que la guerra territorial en la burocracia de la política exterior es un marco conceptual para comprender cómo los funcionarios elegidos utilizan tácticas burocráticas para socavar la participación de los burócratas en los procesos de toma de decisiones. Por último, el estudio contribuye a los debates actuales sobre el populismo y la presidencialización de la política exterior al mostrar que la burocracia de la política exterior no es inmune a la retórica contraria al orden establecido y anti-élite de los gobiernos.

Au moyen d'exemples issus du contexte turc entre 2002 et 2014, cet article montre que la fragmentation opérée dans l’élaboration de politiques étrangères, due aux visions qui s'opposent entre dirigeants élus et membres de la bureaucratie, est susceptible d'entraîner un rapport de compétition entre les différents organes de l’État qui composent la bureaucratie en politique étrangère. Si les membres de la bureaucratie s'insurgent contre les objectifs révisionnistes du gouvernement en matière de politique étrangère, ce dernier fait en sorte de transformer la bureaucratie en donnant davantage de pouvoir à certaines unités plus restreintes, telles que des agences missionnaires. Lorsque le niveau de conflit entre le gouvernement et la bureaucratie s'intensifie, les dirigeants élus choisissent alors de travailler avec les organismes administratifs établis pour accélérer le processus de prise de décisions. S'appuyant sur une série d'entretiens menés auprès de 61 décideurs turcs en matière de politique étrangère, cet article montre que les guerres intestines au sein de la bureaucratie constituent un cadre conceptuel permettant de comprendre les tactiques bureaucratiques utilisées par les dirigeants élus pour contrecarrer l'implication de bureaucrates dans les processus décisionnels. Enfin, ces travaux contribuent aux débats actuels sur le populisme et la présidentialisation de la politique étrangère, en montrant que la bureaucratie n'est pas à l'abri du discours anti-élite et anti-establishment des gouvernements.

Introduction

The foreign policy bureaucracy derives its authority from the shared consensus of recognized elites ( Goldstein and Keohane 1993) and creates harmony among various state agencies over the state's foreign policy options. The preestablished ideas of a given state's foreign policy—that is, a set of ideas that stem from tradition and a shared image about the foreign policy objectives of a state—are likely to create a disagreement between the bureaucratic agencies and the elected officials. Although it is an anticipated outcome that a government disagrees with the bureaucracy in foreign policymaking, the government that adopts an anti-establishment stance is more likely to “invoke discursive frames that mobilize support by prescribing a ‘correction’ or revision of foreign policy to align with the interests of the idealized sovereign community” ( Jenne 2021, 325). In this framework, adopting a revisionist foreign policy and an anti-establishment stance helps the government redefine the state's way of foreign policymaking primarily with elected officials. The policy also embraces crisis-based, short-term interests and nurtures willingness to take political risks. The revisionist policy ideals fundamentally disagree with the foreign policy bureaucracy that represents tradition and a shared image of foreign policy objectives. The fragmentation in foreign policymaking due to adopting different foreign policy ideas, 1 that is, ideas of the government and the bureaucracy, manifests itself in decision-making processes. The duality in foreign policymaking through the government's ideals versus the bureaucratic agencies’ posits puzzling questions to test the turf wars’ conditions within the foreign policymaking: How does a government implement its revisionist foreign policy ideals on the bureaucratic level?

State agencies are an integral part of policymaking and implementation. They constitute the foreign policy bureaucracy and “process information, define options, and follow preestablished repertoires and routines” ( Jones 2010, 14). Yet, once a government distinguishes its foreign policy ideals from the established agencies’, it aims to redesign the way of decision-making. In this vein, a government that adopts an anti-establishment stance in foreign policy manifests itself in designing subordinate agencies, namely missionary agencies. I propose that the turf war through missionary agencies is a fruitful conceptual framework for capturing the competition in a foreign policy bureaucracy. As Drezner (2000, 735) states, missionary agencies “have a coherent set of preferences, where there is little disagreement over the desired goal [on the founding ideas of institutions].” These agencies are practical to either transform an established agency by working with a group of bureaucrats or assign a more significant role to a minor institution. In other words, they are substantial to comprehend how elected officials use bureaucratic tactics to undermine the involvement of bureaucrats in decision-making.

This paper adopts Drezner's definition of missionary agencies. However, in contrast to emphasizing surviving and thriving tactics of agencies, I highlight the strategies the elected officials use through designing those agencies. I also call these departments as missionary agencies because they are created to propel and disseminate the policy agenda of the elected officials, possibly at the expense of the appointed bureaucrats. The modified approach in missionary agencies here suggests that when the government's foreign policy ideals do not resonate with those in the foreign policy bureaucracy, the government empowers the missionary agencies to decouple the bureaucracy and speed up the decision-making processes. The contribution of the paper is that governments’ reluctance to work with the foreign policy bureaucracy leads them to redesign bureaucratic politics.

The Turkish case offers an explanatory platform to understand how an anti-establishment, revisionist party demonstrates its toolbox in defining divergent foreign policy ideas, whereas the state's foreign policy elites stood by with preestablished ideas. The bureaucrats working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Office of the General Staff (OGS), the operating agency of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF), historically had powerful positions in defining Turkish foreign policy and its preestablished ideas. However, Turkey's change in its foreign policy under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) can be read from various perspectives, such as “how a changing elite power structure may remove traditional restraints on foreign policy” ( Aydinli and Erpul 2021, 2) or how “increasing heterogeneity in the elites resulted in an incremental shift in the Turkish foreign policymaking process” ( Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm 2021, 569). While “shift of axis” ( Başer 2015) or “dramatic shifts” ( Kutlay and Öniş 2021a) were frequently used to define Turkey's foreign policy change under the AKP rule, the policy shift is also named as a populist foreign policy ( Aslan 2021) and revisionist foreign policy ( Akkoyunlu 2021). As a broader term, I call Turkish foreign policy between 2002 and 2014 revisionist, whose purpose is to formulate policies against the preestablished ideas of Turkish foreign policy bureaucracy. The anti-establishment feature of AKP's revisionist foreign policy embodied the divergence between the elected and the appointed officials. Some of the earlier examples of revisionist foreign policy were ignoring tradition and shared image in Turkish foreign policymaking, making foreign policy decisions based on crises rather than principles, and taking political risks based on the consensus among only elected officials.

This paper contributes to the discussion on revisionist governments and the foreign policy bureaucracy. Revisionist governments are more likely to adopt divergent foreign ideals than the bureaucracy representing the preestablished ideas of a given state's foreign policy. However, if there is backlash in the foreign policy bureaucracy to realize the government's anti-establishment foreign policy goals, the government aims to transform the bureaucracy by empowering certain small bureaucratic units, that is, missionary agencies. Once the degree of conflict between the government and the bureaucracy becomes severe, the elected officials opt to work with the established agencies to speed up the decision-making processes. In doing so, I emphasize two types of missionary agencies: (1) bureaucracy-driven agencies (BDAs) designed by the government to work with only a small group of like-minded bureaucrats. If the disagreement between the elected and appointed officials becomes severe, then (2) the revisionist government creates government-driven agencies (GDAs) designed to decouple the role of bureaucratic agencies in decision-making.

In the next section of this paper, I first discuss the bureaucratic politics literature in foreign policy analysis and Turkish foreign policy between 2002 and 2014. Those dates are crucial to understanding the competition between the bureaucracy and the government in Turkish foreign policymaking. 2002 is the year that the AKP came to power as a single-party government following the reign of almost-a-decade-long coalition governments. The AKP promised to open a new page in Turkey's relations with the European Union (EU) and the United States following the country went through one of its crucial economic crises in 2001. The 2014 presidential election once again altered the decision-making in foreign policy as the newly elected president made the presidential office the omnipotent decision-maker, while other state departments, including the MFA, simply carried out the orders.

The second section focuses on methodology, followed by an analysis of two key agencies, Secretariat General for European Union Affairs (ABGS) and Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA), that operated as missionary agencies between 2002 and 2014. ABGS reveals the close cooperation between a small group of bureaucrats and government officials when the Turkish government had to work with the bureaucrats. TİKA, however, demonstrates the discrepancy between the elected and appointed officials while emphasizing the divergent foreign policy ideals of the Turkish government. I conclude with a discussion of how the Turkish foreign policymaking is not unique in the scope of bureaucratic turf wars. The rise of populism and the presidentialization of foreign policymaking in non-Western contexts, such as Brazil, expose the limits of executive control over foreign policy decisions compared to the role of bureaucratic agencies. It also contributes to the literature on the foreign policy bureaucracy and the conditions of rivalry between the government and the bureaucracy in foreign policymaking.

Defining Foreign Policy Bureaucracy

There is extended critical literature that discusses the role of bureaucracy in foreign policymaking ( Jones 2010) in response to Allison’s (1971) bureaucratic politics model. 2 In the last thirty years, the bureaucratic politics model is also analyzed, combining various other foreign policy analysis theories. For instance, Kaarbo (1998) and Kaarbo and Gruenfeld (1998) introduce social psychology into the bureaucratic politics, Brummer (2013) analyzes the model through poliheuristic theory, while Cantir and Kaarbo (2012) explore its scope through role theory. Accordingly, the details of turf wars between the bureaucracy and the government are well documented in studies on American foreign policymaking ( Snyder, Bruck, and Sapin 1954; Allison 1971; Allison and Halperin 1972) and turf wars between different state agencies analyzed in the last decade are considered explanatory in the bureaucratic politics ( Brummer 2013; Marsh 2014). Still, little research has been done on how the competition in the foreign policy bureaucracy occurs ( Kaarbo 1998; Desrosiers and Lagassé 2009; Jones 2010; Lequesne 2019), especially in non-Western contexts, and why the government empowers missionary agencies to realize its divergent foreign policy goals rather than transferring foreign policy competencies of the bureaucracy to the leader's office.

Each state agency that operates in the foreign policy bureaucracy brings its own approach and institutional priorities into the decision-making processes. Additionally, the involvement of various state agencies prevents the creation of “a smooth interagency process that handles policy planning” ( Drezner 2009, 11). Another reason for the complexity of cross- and inter-agency communication is the acceleration of globalization and the growing interdependence of states. These global challenges ultimately upgrade the classical turf war between the president/prime minister (PM) and Congress/parliament. The interdependence of a state with the global economy “reinforces these bureaucratic battles, as several executive branch departments seemingly oriented toward domestic affairs now are also stakeholders in the foreign policy game” ( McCormick 2018, 14).

Defining the Conditions for Competition in Foreign Policy Bureaucracy

Another layer of bureaucratic rivalry also exists within the foreign policy bureaucracy, whose conditions are set by the anti-establishment government. According to the noted rhetoric, the established agencies do not represent the nation and the state on the ground that these institutors and bureaucrats are eager to agree with the international actors without considering the people. “[D]ue to its professional formation and the elitist traditions attached to it, the diplomatic corps will likely appear suspicious to a populist leader and his followers” ( Plagemann and Destradi 2019, 288). In that sense, including missionary agencies in the foreign policymaking processes would help the government bring the voices of “nation” and avoid aligning with the elitist traditions in the decision-making processes.

As idea-infused institutions, Kaarbo (1998, 76) and Drezner (2000, 736) categorize missionary agencies into two groups: first, the vertical/insulated agencies are equivalent to the established agencies in the hierarchy and make decisions as corresponding departments. Second, the horizontal/embedded agencies are subunits of a larger established agency and have less choice over shaping policies. Although these studies have a clear understanding of the strategies of missionary agencies to influence decision-making and their role in the bureaucratic hierarchy, we still know little about how the relationship between the government and the established agencies evolves and why the government creates missionary agencies to pivot the decision-making process at all.

I argue that missionary agencies differ in terms of the revisionist government's foreign policy preferences and to what extent the disagreement between the government and bureaucracy is severe. The government might redesign a small bureaucratic unit as a missionary agency to work with the established agencies, even though foreign policy ideals of the government and the bureaucracy are not corresponding. In this case, the government does not have enough external support from its constituents and members of the bureaucracy. It aims to realize its foreign policy ideals through working with established agencies while advancing the authority of a smaller department located within an established agency. The reason for widening the authority of a smaller department is to send the message that the government still works with the bureaucracy but not agree with the bureaucratic structure. In practice, however, it works with only a handful of bureaucrats who align with the government's foreign policy ideals. It is the early phase of the divergent foreign policy agenda of the government, and elected officials still need to earn the support of the bureaucracy. Granting authority to a small group of like-minded bureaucrats in an established agency does not create resistance because the missionary agency is founded by the representatives of foreign policy bureaucracy. Those agencies, which I call BDAs, make decisions as corresponding departments, as Kaarbo (1998) and Drezner (2000) articulate. The bureaucrats in those agencies still have decisive authority over policy options, but they have to negotiate with the government to follow the preestablished ideas of foreign policy.

Gaining public support for its foreign policy ideals helps the government to be critical of the preestablished ideas represented by the bureaucracy. The government, then, tends to escalate the conflict between the two groups of officials. Still, the elected officials are not able to move foreign policy competencies from the established agencies because they are in need of bureaucratic expertise to even realize the government's divergent foreign policy ideals. In this case, the elected officials grant authority to GDAs to minimize the authority of the established agencies and to speed up the decision-making processes. Working within the bureaucratic hierarchy is also a time-consuming experience for the government that is eager to reach fast outcomes in foreign policy. The government urges bureaucrats to speed up the bureaucratic decision-making mechanisms and advises them to ignore their interagency communication before bringing an issue to the leader. At this point, a GDA offers a shortcut in bureaucratic decision-making: the agency has direct contact with the leader and works with foreign partners in its respected field to realize the government's foreign policy ideals. GDAs have less choice over shaping policies, and the careers of bureaucrats in those agencies are embedded in the success of government policies.

I summarize this framework in table 1.

Classification of missionary agencies in Turkish foreign policy bureaucracy

Classification of missionary agencies in Turkish foreign policy bureaucracy

Hypothesis

When the government's foreign policy ideals diverge from those of the bureaucratic structure, the former is likely to create (1) BDAs, which are formed within an established agency to work with a small group of like-minded bureaucrats. Once the disagreement between the government and the bureaucracy becomes severe, then the government creates (2) GDAs, which seek to decouple the role of established agencies in decision-making.

Research Design, Methodology, and Case Selection

To illustrate the turf war conditions in Turkish foreign policy bureaucracy, I conducted interviews with sixty-one foreign policy elites during the fieldwork in Istanbul and Ankara between September 2017 and August 2018 (Table 2). The respondents included senior Turkish diplomats who served as ministers and undersecretaries, and bureaucrats from various state departments. To analyze alternative explanations, I also interviewed journalists and academics. The gender profile of interviewees is consisted of overwhelmingly male respondents (90 percent) as opposed to female respondents (10 percent). The gender ratio is more unbalanced in the bureaucratic cluster (which includes diplomats and bureaucrats in total), where thirty-five interviewees were male (94.5 percent) and only two of them were female (4.5 percent).

Among the sixty-one respondents, 47.5 percent were diplomats (twenty-nine respondents) who served between 2002 and 2014. Four of the respondents had been serving in a position, while twenty-five respondents were retired diplomats with the rank of ambassador when the interviews were conducted. The average years served in the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs was thirty-eight among respondents. The selection criteria for the interview were that they served either in a historical embassy (such as Washington, DC, Berlin, London, Paris) or as the undersecretary of the ministry or a director-general/deputy undersecretary of a major department (such as Policy Planning, Bilateral Political Affairs, Economic Affairs). 13 percent of interviewees (eight) are active bureaucrats working in the MFA, Turkish Parliament, and TİKA. 29.5 percent were academics (eighteen) in different career ranges and whose expertise was foreign policymaking. Half of the academic interviewees are affiliated with a think tank and had first-hand experience working with government officials in foreign policy issues. Finally, 10 percent of interviewees participated in the research with their professional experience as a journalist (four), businessperson (one), and high-ranking general (one).

The findings draw from a series of sixty- to ninety-minute interviews with foreign policymakers and policy observers. All the interviews were conducted under the condition of anonymity to the sources. I contacted each respondent with the reference of a previous interviewee. The operating language was Turkish, although respondents sometimes switched to English to emphasize their points. The interviews were not audio-recorded; instead, I took notes during the sessions and transcribed the notes within an hour or two after each conversation. The interview questionnaire included broad, open-ended questions to recognize the respondent's perspective regarding the focus of the issue.

Elite interviewing is still a rare practice in examining the foreign policy bureaucracy although there is a call to use methods other than textual sources such as ethnography in the discipline ( Neumann 2012). “Bureaucracies are designed to guard information, and foreign policy institutions do so explicitly, with little allowance made to transparency or public engagement” ( Kuus 2013, 118). In this vein, the interview technique is the rarest opportunity to reveal information from bureaucratic decision-makers. In comparison, textual sources produced by state agencies are usually professionally redacted and share little information about the decision-making process. However, “interviewing, despite its flaws, is often the best tool for establishing how subjective factors influence political decision-making, the motivations of those involved, and the role of agency in events of interest” ( Rathbun 2009, 686).

Although limited public access to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives prevented me from utilizing relevant primary materials, 3 I was able to triangulate the data from my interviews with published memoirs of Turkish bureaucrats and public statements of state agencies. To detect any biases and misrepresentation, I have created a codebook on ATLAS.ti and removed some details of the interview transcripts, so that details such as dates, places, and names were not included, if not match with open-access sources. Since all the respondents are senior figures who worked with each other for an extended period, I also cross-referenced the details of responses with each other in the coding phase.

I utilized these data to conduct process-tracing. Bennett and Checkel (2015, 7) define process-tracing as “the analysis of the evidence on processes, sequences, and conjunctures of events within a case.” The method is a crucial way of understanding how a revisionist, anti-establishment government learns the “art of foreign policymaking” while transforming the established agencies. One of the main arguments of this paper is that a government conditionally transforms the foreign policy bureaucracy: first, it works with a group of selected bureaucrats under the BDAs. Once the conflict between the elected and appointed officials gets severe, it supports the GDAs to speed up the decision-making processes. To unfold the process of reactionist government's ideals over foreign policy bureaucracy, “the descriptive component of process tracing begins not with observing change or sequence, but rather with taking good snapshots at a series of specific moments” ( Collier 2011, 824) (emphasis added). For the systematic analysis of variables and events over the turf war between the appointed and elected officials in foreign policymaking, I selected two state agencies from Turkish foreign policy: ABGS, which exposes the close cooperation between the bureaucrats and government officials, and TİKA, which represents the divergent foreign policy goals of the government than the bureaucracy.

As table 3 suggests, the Turkish foreign policy bureaucracy constructed its ideals on predictability by emphasizing the country's alliance with the United States and the EU and sustaining the stability in its surrounding region. To realize those ideals, the Turkish MFA built symmetrical relations with other MFAs and Turkish state agencies. As a case study, ABGS represents the pro-Western stance of Turkish bureaucracy and the hierarchical structure in Turkish foreign policymaking where the bureaucrats from the Turkish MFA played a substantial role in preserving. For instance, the secretariat served both as the chief negotiator in negotiations between Turkey and the EU and as the leading state agency to assign and oversee the tasks that each Turkish state institution had to follow in the accession process to the EU. The secretariat paid attention to inform every step of the bureaucratic structure, sought consensus among bureaucratic agencies, and looked out of the hierarchical rank in decision-making, such as informing superiors in the MFA. Although ABGS was founded in the MFA, its agenda was single-handedly set by the Turkish government and applied by bureaucrats, which are the conditions to form a BDA. As a case selection strategy, ABGS offers “to take a good snapshot” at the Europeanization momentum in the early 2000s, which was a highly politicized issue in Turkish foreign policy. The relationship between the Turkish bureaucracy and government gives an opportunity to observe the earlier version of foreign policymaking before the severity reaches its peak.

Principal ideas of Turkish missionary agencies

Principal ideas of Turkish missionary agencies

Contrarily, the Turkish elected officials working for a reactionist government were inclined to respond to international crises without seeking consensus among bureaucratic agencies. To generate an immediate response to crises, the government took political risks by only consulting with the appointed bureaucrats in missionary agencies. The intention of bypassing the bureaucratic structure, rules, and norms that do not align with the government's foreign policy ideas led the elected officials to grant broader authority to missionary agencies. In this vein, TİKA, Turkey's principal agency in charge of humanitarian aid, was granted greater authority than equal agencies serving in the Turkish foreign policy bureaucracy. The government increased its budget nearly five-fold in the span of a decade to decouple the MFA from the decision-making processes. The government was also keen to assign TİKA to communicate with the heads of states and to build asymmetrical relations with the agencies serving in foreign bureaucracies. In terms of case selection, TİKA offers a detailed perspective about Turkey's international development policy, which was not a headline until the 2010s. The agenda-setting character of development policy in foreign policymaking helps to understand the change in Turkish foreign policy.

The severity of disagreement between the bureaucracy and government manifested itself starting from the 2010s while “the government engaged in an effort to extend its control over the foreign affairs bureaucracy, with some success” ( Akkoyunlu 2021, 250). The disagreement was first made public with a written statement published from seventy-two retired ambassadors and consul-generals to protest the then PM Erdogan's calling the diplomats “mon cher” to imply the elitist structure of Turkish foreign policy. Some of the signatories clarify the beginning of severe conditions in the relationship as “the role of PM in decision-making increased, there was more involvement of security and intelligence units, and it appeared ‘inner circles’ within bureaucratic institutions to decrease the role of MFA. The reaction of MFA was to withstand it in a non-public way, and there was a struggle based on obedience versus protest.” 4

The paper focuses on the time frame between 2002 and 2014. There is still a shallow understating of the earlier discussion in disagreement between the bureaucracy and the government in the Turkish case before all the significant changes we observed in the post-2014 era. 5 In the following section, I provide an overview of the Turkish foreign policy bureaucracy and present my analysis of ABGS and TİKA to best illustrate these relationships.

Turkish Foreign Policy Bureaucracy and Missionary Agencies

In 2002, the AKP era started with the question of whether there would be an ideological shift in Turkish foreign policy ( Gulmez 2013; Kirdiş 2015; Alpan 2016). However, it took almost a decade for the AKP governments to reflect its neoconservative agenda on foreign policy moves, specifically toward Europe ( Aydın-Düzgit and Kaliber 2016; Yilmaz 2016). In this vein, the discussion on the “shift of axis” or a multidimensional approach considering the weakening of the commitment to EU membership and Turkey's deepening relations with the Middle Eastern states dominated the second decade of the AKP governments ( Kardaş 2012; Öniş 2012, 2014; Başer 2015; Öniş and Kutlay 2017). One of the main reasons for the discussion on the ideological dimension in Turkish foreign policy was the strong leadership styles that dominated the decision-making processes. AKP governments’ foreign policy vision embodied the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoğlu's ideas. Specifically, these ideas included international activism, repairing Turkey's relations with neighboring countries, and using soft power tools to become a regional player in the Middle East ( Kardaş 2012; Aras 2014; Ilgit and Ozkececi-Taner 2014; Cohen 2016). The personification of power over political figures introduced the ideas of “the dismantling of the existing institutions and the claim to build a new country” ( Selçuk 2016, 572). At this point, studies also focused on the personalities of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to investigate whether his ideals caused a rupture in Turkish foreign policy ( Kesgin 2013, 2019; Çuhadar et al. 2017, 2020).

Considering the period between 2002 and 2014, the 2011 Arab Spring added an alternative dimension to the leader-centered analysis in foreign policy, which exclusively focused on authoritarian/competitive authoritarian tendencies and democratic backsliding in Turkish foreign policy ( Esen and Gumuscu 2016, 2019). Some scholars read the post-2011 era from a systematic perspective and move beyond the dynamics of domestic politics and the democratic shift: Turkish foreign policy “cannot be divorced from the interactions of domestic politics and external dynamics. Turkey's relentless quest for a more autonomous space predicated on nationalism and unilateralism initially generated widespread domestic political support for the government” ( Kutlay and Öniş 2021b, 3064). Still, this group of studies reveals a neglected dimension in Turkish foreign policy bureaucracy: How did the Turkish government redesign certain agencies to realize its divergent foreign policy goals, and to what extent did the bureaucracy respond to the revisionist foreign policy ideas of the government? In the next section, I will introduce the pillar of the Turkish foreign policy bureaucracy and its battle zone vis-à-vis revisionist foreign policy ideas introduced by the AKP.

An Overview on Turkish Foreign Policy Bureaucracy

The Turkish foreign policy bureaucracy consisted of three established agencies that sustained the backbone of the decision-making until the late 2000s. They were MFA, OGS, 6 and the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). Each established agency had its own internal decision-making processes before reaching a policy suggestion to inform the PMO. The ideological proximity of the MFA and OGS and the clear division of responsibilities between them often led to a unified approach in the foreign policy bureaucracy. The MFA and OGS were the branches of the foreign policy bureaucracy that gathered information to define policy options and follow the preestablished foreign policy repertoire before officially briefing the PM.

Constitutionally, the PM, as the head of government, was the ultimate decision-maker while OGS asserted its dominance over security issues. Other than exceptional circumstances when the president stepped in, 7 usually due to their personality, rather than their role in decision-making during the 1990s and 2000s, the PM had the authority to make the final decision. Once the PM's position on the issue became clear, the directive returned to the MFA to be implemented. In case of a disagreement among the established agencies, particularly between the MFA and OGS, the PM was in charge of making the final decision. For instance, during the early 2000s, when minority rights, specifically Kurdish rights, were an issue in Turkey's Europeanization agenda, according to the former MFA deputy undersecretaries, the ministry was in favor of legalizing the Kurdish language in public. Notwithstanding, OGS was against adopting such policies. 8 In this circumstance, the PM was the one who decided while the PMO was historically inclined to agree with OGS. A rupture between the MFA and OGS was still rare, while the bureaucrats from these agencies oversaw reaching a consensus. Although the Turkish constitution did not decree a hierarchical structure between the state departments, as a Turkish career diplomat puts it, the MFA was “the guardians of an upper realm in state affairs” and the bureaucratic practice perpetuated a hierarchical relationship between the MFA and other agencies ( Özkan 2015, 52). 9 The MFA was in charge of “introducing policy options before making the decision but did not stand against the government's orders. The MFA was an actor in the decision-making system and did not consider overthrowing the whole system.” 10

Whereas the TAF and its operating agency, OGS, had a high degree of social trust in the policymaking processes, TAF had “limited confidence in civilian institutions, [and] had a constant propensity and ambition to intervene” ( Sarigil 2011, 269–70). Accordingly, the MFA kept its gatekeeper role in policymaking for a long time because its bureaucrats both abided by the authority of OGS in policymaking ( Selcen 2019, 21) and shared its distrust toward elected officials. As a former MFA undersecretary puts it, “OGS trusted the MFA, rather than trusting politicians, [. . .] whom the MFA also did not trust.” 11 Turkey's security-driven foreign policy throughout the Cold War was what made OGS the dominant agency by constantly being consulted by both the MFA and the PMO ( Tayfur and Göymen 2002). Some of the MFA bureaucrats also named the decision-making process undemocratic because of the dominant role of OGS, but still, “the MFA or other agencies were not in a position to question the authority [of OGS]” ( Selcen 2019, 53).

The established agencies preserved their roles in the decision-making processes until the second term of the AKP government (2007–2011), when severe domestic and international conditions began challenging the country. Notably, Turkey's EU membership negotiations were stalled due to both EU's internal dynamics that did not support Turkey's membership and Turkey's prospering economic cooperation with Middle Eastern countries ( Müftüler-Baç 2016). Meanwhile, the earlier EU harmonization process led the Turkish military to comply with “the constitutional changes demanded by the EU, which had significantly curbed its power” ( Demir and Bingöl 2020, 181). Due to its solid electoral mandate, the AKP limited OGS's role over politics “by implementing legal reforms that reduced the institutional power of the military in decision making and through the political de-legitimisation of the military's extra-legal interventions in politics” ( Esen and Gumuscu 2016, 1585).

Although Turkey's democratic backsliding was proved with unfair elections, politicization of judicial institutions, uneven access to the public resources, and violation of civil rights ( Esen and Gumuscu 2016; Tansel 2018), the third AKP government under the leadership of Erdoğan (2011–2014) was secured enough public support. The severity between the bureaucracy and government in foreign policy manifested itself in this period. A political appointee describes the appointed bureaucrats as “unable to take risk in foreign policy and have generational differences in understanding today's diplomacy due to their career spent with military coups in Turkey.” 12 In retrospect, career diplomats criticize the government and political appointees’ perception on “labeling MFA and bureaucrats who are hawkish pro-Western, ignorant about Turkey's interests, feeling closer to the West's interests in international policy.” 13 In this term, the severity between the bureaucracy and the government could be summarized with five policies: centralizing foreign policy decision-making, redistributing the resource allocation of state institutions, appointing noncareer diplomats, reducing external accountability, and introducing reform packages for bureaucracy for the sake of pluralism in decision-making. 14

As table 3 depicts, while the MFA was strongly in favor of making decisions in accordance with the preestablished ideas (such as adopting a pro-Western stance, not being part of regional rivalries in the Middle East, and preserving the alliance with the United States), 15 the third AKP government was ready to pursue changes in those values as modus operandi. The first indicator regarding the government's divergent foreign policy ideals was that the AKP-appointed bureaucrats reframed the bureaucratic authority of the MFA and emphasized the role of the political appointees in the decision-making. Appointing to the critical posts at the MFA headquarters in Ankara and its diplomatic branches abroad, specifically in major capitals, were the reason d'être of the diplomatic profession and “the competition among senior diplomats were already severe.” 16 Diplomats did not agree with the idea of appointment of the academics and advisors to AKP leaders to these critical posts; however, “political appointments reflected the government's perspective.” 17

The first political and non-diplomat appointee to the directorship of the MFA's research center, the Strategic Research Centre (SAM), referred to the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoğlu's leadership and his policy to “combine state capabilities and popular support including reform and redefinition of the roles in [the MFA]” ( Aras 2015, 271). His non-diplomat successors name the change in the MFA as “changes within continuity,” on the ground that Turkey's “new” foreign policy choices reflected the visions of the new political elite, whose members are the government-affiliated bureaucrats ( Özcan and Usul 2011). The government's divergent foreign policy agenda made the political appointees the main decision-maker at the expense of previous bureaucratic stakeholders. The AKP-appointed bureaucrats whose authority was previously limited to the positions at the PMO were now being selected for the positions that had been typically designed for career bureaucrats. 18 The motivation behind replacing the political appointees with career bureaucrats was to speed up the decision-making process in the bureaucratic structure.

One of the main promises from the third AKP government was the shift to the presidential system, which committed to simplifying the bureaucratic hierarchy and reducing the number of departments in charge of making foreign policy decisions ( Cumhuriyet 2013). To resist against “the bureaucratic oligarchy,” a term widely used by the AKP bureaucrats to emphasize “the non-democratic characteristics of decision-making,” 19 new missionary agencies were formed, or smaller departments were reorganized under the PMO starting in 2011. The careers of the directors serving in GDAs were also significantly different than the career diplomats’: most of them were younger than the career diplomats, who typically spend twenty to twenty-five years in the MFA, and they had a few years of civil service experience after studying abroad for having an academic career. In this vein, AKP-appointed bureaucrats were not familiar with the bureaucratic structure, rules, and hierarchy as a high-ranking bureaucrat from the PMO puts it: “We [political appointees] learn how to navigate in the bureaucracy while making decisions.” 20

In the following section, I focus on two cases, ABGS and TİKA, to examine the transition of power from the bureaucracy to the government in foreign policymaking.

ABGS: A Bureaucracy-Driven Agency

The EU accession talks dominated the first AKP government's foreign policy agenda as it was Turkey's most important foreign policy goal in the post–Cold War era. Following the recognition of Turkey's EU candidacy status in December 1999, ABGS was founded to overseeing the accession negotiations and sustaining the communication between state agencies working on various negotiation chapters. 21 The agency was formed at the MFA in early 2000 and moved to the PMO in July 2000 before the AKP took office ( Özcoşkun 2018). Once the AKP came to power in 2002, there was already bureaucratic rivalry between ABGS and the MFA due to the growing budget and the decision-making role of the former, so the new government worked hard to balance it. 22

The rivalry was less pronounced than the MFA's antagonism against other established agencies because the management team of ABGS was also composed of career diplomats. Nonetheless, ABGS offered better career opportunities to the career diplomats, such as head-to-head working with the leader and shaping Turkey's European policy with a small group of bureaucrats. An advisor to the then minister of foreign affairs names the MFA and ABGS as the two crucial agencies to support the reform movement in the bureaucracy introduced by the first AKP government ( Sever 2015, 61). Eventually, the peace deal was set: ABGS shared some of the technical burdens of the long and detailed EU negotiation process if the MFA oversaw Turkey's EU agenda. 23

The government granted broader authority to ABGS, indeed, more than it had granted the MFA in the EU negotiations. The AKP government transformed ABGS into an influential bureaucratic actor to work closely with the selected bureaucrats rather than having to work with the MFA as an established agency. For instance, the ABGS directors received standing instructions from the PM that the negotiations would continue regardless of the roadblocks coming from the EU or the Turkish bureaucratic agencies. 24

The collaboration was not a sign of convergence on policy ideals between the elected and appointed officials. 25 Once the Europeanization momentum slowed down in the late 2000s, the government transformed the agency into a ministry in 2011. It also replaced Turkey's head negotiator, a position previously filled by the ABGS directors, with the AKP-affiliated bureaucrats and elected representatives. 26 The intra-agency turf war between the ABGS bureaucrats and the elected officials ended the reigning authority of ABGS over the Europeanization momentum. Once the government decided to realize its own foreign policy ideals by forming a ministry in charge of EU affairs, rather than reaching a consensus with the ABGS bureaucrats, it created a ministry that would directly work under the elected officials. Eventually, the MFA and its bureaucrats stepped down from the decision-making process over the EU affairs while the AKP-appointed bureaucrats were appointed to realize the government's foreign policy ideals regarding the European policy.

TİKA: A Government-Driven Agency

TİKA was founded as the Directorate for Economic, Cultural, and Technical Cooperation under the MFA in 1992 ( Özcoşkun 2018) with the intention of “helping to transform economies in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans” ( Fidan and Nurdun 2008, 99–100). In 1999, the agency was reorganized as an undersecretary and moved to the PMO. At that time, “placing TİKA under the prime ministry facilitated a convenient environment for TİKA's president, the chief advisor of foreign affairs [to the PM], and the cabinet to work together” ( Ipek 2015, 188). As its former director puts it, the agency expanded its projects to the Middle East and North Africa to diversify Turkey's foreign policy agenda after 2002 ( Fidan 2013, 94). Almost a decade later, in 2011, TİKA was reorganized through an executive order that increased its organizational and financial capabilities. As Kavakli (2018, 624) states, “Turkey's economic aid program greatly expanded soon after 2003, but there was not a significant expansion of humanitarian aid until the [2011] Syrian War.” With Turkey's involvement in the Syrian civil war and the subsequent refugee crisis, TİKA became the principal national agency coordinating Turkey's international aid policy from 2011. The era following 2011 also represented the democratic backsliding in Turkish domestic politics so that its reflections transformed Turkish foreign policy. The 2013 Gezi protests and the following policies to strip hundreds of citizens from their civil liberties “gravely undermined the party's credentials and self-representation as a vehicle of ‘civilianisation, democratisation, freedom of belief and equality of opportunity’” ( Tansel 2018, 205).

The growing role of TİKA in foreign policymaking was also noticeable in its relations with the MFA. 27 The change in TİKA's code through an executive order made it an ad-hoc institution that was not obligated to coordinate with the MFA ( Sevin 2017). The executive order also granted the agency access to the budgets of other state departments with the approval of the deputy prime minister in charge of TİKA. In turn, the budget of the agency increased nearly five-fold between 2003 and 2013 compared to the decade prior ( Akıllı and Çelenk 2019, 143). Turkey's overall humanitarian aid spending rose from $73 million in 2002 to $3.3 billion in 2013 ( Lepeska 2014).

TİKA's economic autonomy also illustrates the details of its competition with the MFA since TİKA did not seek the permission of the MFA for projects. As a TİKA-affiliated interviewee noted, “according to the constitution, an [Turkish] ambassador is the most senior bureaucrat representing the Turkish state abroad, but the ambassador could not give orders to [TİKA officials].” 28 While an ambassador is not a party to the agency's internal decision-making system, “the ambassador might help the local TİKA office to pass the project proposal coming from local channels. Essentially, the ambassador is only invited to the opening ceremony of the project, rather than having a role in deciding which project TİKA would work on.” 29

A noncareer diplomat from the MFA confirms the autonomy of TİKA in policymaking by pointing out the hierarchy between TİKA and the MFA, where the GDAs are instrumental in setting the tone in the decision-making process:

It depends on the TİKA representative serving in a particular country to report [TİKA] activities to the embassy. It is usually out of courtesy if a representative would inform the ambassador. Also, it is not practical for TİKA to work with the MFA since the TİKA director and deputy directors are able to personally reach the prime minister and the president to consult. The agency also did not need the MFA support because it has access to first-hand information through its local offices and is able to share local intelligence with the PMO. The agency works like a second MFA because TİKA has been directed by people with less bureaucratic connections but more political ties to the government (emphasis added). 30

The limited authority of the MFA over TİKA as a GDA was the outcome of the divergence of policy ideas in Turkish foreign policy. Following an executive order issued in 2011, TİKA went through a transformation from a small department under the PMO to a GDA whose wider authority made it so that it could act as a second MFA. Additionally, having access to the PM, and later the president, granted TİKA a broader role in the decision-making processes and authority to decouple the foreign policy bureaucracy, whereas “the ambassadors could not cope with the reality to work with other Turkish agencies.” 31 Although senior diplomats oversaw the role of TİKA as “the concentration of power in foreign policy” 32 and resisted cooperating with the TİKA representatives abroad, mid-career diplomats were more in line with cooperation and “sharing the burden of foreign policy issues with other Turkish agencies abroad.” 33 The then president also encouraged the TİKA director to work with the MFA in the early 2010s ( Sever 2015, 120).

As a GDA that the government redesigned, TİKA gained various advantages regarding human and financial resources compared to other bureaucratic agencies. Still, its main advantage to the government's foreign policy agenda was to promise to interfere in international crises without seeking consensus in the bureaucracy. Its collaboration with the elected officials enabled the agency to avoid abiding by the bureaucratic rituals and hierarchy. Replacing the representatives of “the bureaucratic oligarchy” with the people who had political connections with the government allowed the government to diverge from the preestablished ideas of the foreign policy bureaucracy.

Conclusion

This article argues, based on in-depth interviews with sixty-one Turkish foreign elites and primary as well as secondary resources, that there exists a fragmentation in foreign policymaking due to adopting different foreign policy ideas, that is, ideas of the government and the bureaucracy. The competition between the foreign policy ideals of the elected and appointed figures are manifested itself in the design of missionary agencies. If there is backlash in the bureaucracy to realize the government's foreign policy goals, the government aims to transform the bureaucracy by empowering certain small bureaucratic units, that is, missionary agencies. Once the degree of conflict between the government and the bureaucracy becomes severe, the elected officials opt to work with the established agencies to speed up the decision-making processes. In doing so, I emphasize two types of missionary agencies: (1) BDAs designed by the government to work with only a small group of like-minded bureaucrats. If the disagreement between the elected and appointed officials becomes severe, then (2) the revisionist government creates GDAs designed to decouple the role of bureaucratic agencies in decision-making. In this research, I found support for the argument that the divergence in foreign policy goals of the government and the bureaucracy, briefly over predictability and hierarchy, materialized through the creation of missionary agencies. Decoupling the role of the established agencies in Turkish foreign policy between 2002 and 2014 helped the elected officials redefine Turkish foreign policy's objectives.

This paper contributes to the bureaucratic politics discussion in foreign policy studies in three ways. First, it sheds light on the tension between the appointed bureaucrats and elected government officials. Through case studies, I scrutinized the competition in the foreign policy bureaucracy and the rise of political appointees involved in the decision-making. In the case of Turkey, as the government's foreign policy ideas diverge from the bureaucracy, the missionary agencies are empowered by the elected officials to alter the decision-making process. Second, the paper offers an opportunity to build on current debates about how the differences in ideas between the government and the bureaucracy influence the construction of state agencies. The Turkish case shows that electoral support for government policies and the degree of disagreement between the officials encourage the elected officials to realize divergent foreign policy goals. Those goals differ from the foreign policy ideals of the bureaucracy that prioritize predictability, stability, and long-term gain in foreign policymaking. The design of missionary agencies becomes the epicenter of the rivalry between the government and the bureaucracy.

The Turkish case is not unique in terms of the changing characteristics of the foreign policy bureaucracy and decision-making processes. Recently, the US foreign policy apparatus went through similar turmoil, where the state department bureaucrats explicitly disagree with the Trump administration over foreign policy goals ( Gramer, De Luce, and Lynch 2017; Drezner 2019). The autonomy of the president over foreign policy decisions at the expense of the state department's criticism was widely discussed. According to a Democratic staff report prepared for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the US Senate, career bureaucrats serving at the state department reported that “senior leadership exhibit[ed] a sense of disrespect and disdain for their work, prompting many to leave the profession” ( Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democratic Staff Report [SFRC] 2020, 5).

Third, this study has implications for the nexus between revisionist foreign policy, and populism, and policymaking. The populist turn in foreign policymaking is an indicator to understand the antagonism between the appointed and elected officials. Accordingly, debates over populist foreign policy should pay more attention to the government–bureaucracy rivalry. The findings of the research show that populist governments distinguish their policy preferences from bureaucratic agencies. The foreign policy ideas of populist leaders are less likely to thrive in the established bureaucratic structure due to their revisionist and anti-establishment rhetoric. However, populist administrations still appear “to succeed in eroding the capabilities of existing institutions, making any restoration of liberal internationalism more difficult” ( Drezner 2019, 724). Relatedly, this study has implications for the presidentialization of foreign policymaking. Cason and Power (2009) and De Faria et al. (2013) observe a similar trend in Brazil, where policymaking is subject to the whims of the president and policymaking takes place in “a hurry” since the president has a fixed term in office while the bureaucracy historically inclines to make long-term strategies ( Cason and Power 2009, 135). Future research should further examine how the presidentialization of foreign policy influences the role of the bureaucracy in the decision-making processes. Regarding the Turkish foreign policy scholarship, future research can also seek to understand the role of Turkish political appointees serving in capitals such as Prague, Tokyo, and Washington, DC. Also, Turkey's humanitarian aid policy in Africa, particularly Turkish engagement in Somalia, offers a case study to scrutinize the anti-establishment rhetoric of a revisionist government.

Acknowledgement

I want to thank Sibel Oktay and Barış Kesgin for their constructive comments and invaluable support in improving earlier drafts of this article. I received very helpful suggestions from my PhD committee members, Resat Kasaba, Daniel Bessner, and Joel Migdal. I am also grateful for advice from the chairs and discussants of the 2019 ISA Annual Convention, 2020 APSA Annual Meeting, and 2021 EPSA Conference. Finally, I would like to thank the reviewers for their comments that have immensely improved this article.

Notes

Berkay Gülen is a PhD candidate at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. Her interest areas are bureaucratic politics and foreign policy of Middle Eastern states, specifically on Turkey and Israel.