1 Introduction

This chapter maps the changing features of the policy advisory system in Turkey and explores the policy advisory roles of Turkish political scientists in the 2000s. We take policy advisory systems as systems “of interlocking actors, with a unique configuration in each sector and jurisdiction, who provide information, knowledge and recommendations for action to policy makers” (Craft & Howlett, 2012: 80). In mapping the institutional features of Turkey’s policy advisory system, we follow the editors of this volume (Chap. 2) who rely on the multi-dimensional locational policy advisory system model developed by Blum and Brans (2017). The demand side of the policy advisory system comprises a variety of decision makers who receive policy advice through several different access points. On the supply side of the advisory system, on the other hand, are policy advisors offering advice to the aforesaid decision makers. This chapter focuses on the advisory roles of political scientists employed at universities in Turkey on the supply side and contextualizes these with the demand side of the country’s advisory system.

Public policy research suggests that policy advisory systems feature nationally specific characteristics. There seems to be a general consensus in the literature that the type of policy advisory system, among other things, systematically varies across countries with their respective levels of development (Howlett, 2019) and systems of government (Hustedt & Veit, 2017). It is therefore no wonder that the editors of this volume conclude that “the policy advisory system in any country reflects the broader and deeper political-administrative-social system in that country” (Brans et al., 2022, Chap. 2this volume). This chapter will thus explore the advisory roles of political scientists in Turkey’s changing policy advisory system against the background of the ever-increasing centralization of executive power in the country over the course of the 2000s.

The chapter presents the findings of an exploratory case study on Turkey’s policy advisory system and the advisory role of political scientists, based on empirical data collected using a variety of methods. First, it relies on the data obtained from the responses to the ProSEPS survey, a cross-national study conducted in more than 30 European countries within the framework of the ProSEPS COST Action, which included questions on the advisory roles of European political scientists. This chapter focuses on the responses provided by a sample of 97 political scientists working in political science, public administration and international relations departments at universities in Turkey, collected during the period January–February 2019. These survey results are then contextualized with other recent scholarship and case study material collected through interviews with policymakers carried out for the purposes of various different research projects, the review of programming documents and a survey of printed publications collected over the course of the 2010s. Rather than presenting conclusive evidence on the policy advisory system and the role of political scientists within that system, the chapter aims to open up new avenues of research and help scholars develop hypotheses to be tested with further data.

The chapter is structured as follows. The second section outlines the changing features of Turkey’s policy advisory system in an environment characterized by the centralization of executive power within a hybrid political regime. It explores how government actors have dictated the terms of engagement of societal actors in the policy process over the last two decades. It also compares the ways in which government actors in general, and the president’s office in particular, have been treating political-strategic and everyday agenda items differently in receiving policy advice. It concludes by examining how Turkey’s policy advisory system is increasingly influenced by a host of processes, including the externalization, politicization, privatization, Europeanization and societalization of advice. The third section explores the main access points through which political scientists bring their expertise to policy processes by drawing on the Locational PAS Model developed by Blumand Brans (2017). It traces the extent to which political scientists’ access is institutionalized both within and at the intersections between the governmental arena and the societal arena and examines the degree of such access. It does so by exploring the dynamics of access in the processes of policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. The fourth section presents the policy advisory roles of political scientists in Turkey with the help of the ProSEPS survey. After having introduced the survey, this section outlines the characteristics of those political scientists who provide advice. We then explore the main recipients of policy advice, the different types of advisory activity, the predominant roles of political scientists in Turkey’s policy advisory system and also political scientists’ normative positions on their relationship to policymaking and policy actors. The fifth section offers our conclusions.

2 Turkey’s Changing Policy Advisory System

The policy advisory system in Turkey operated increasingly within the context of an ever-increasing centralization of executive power during the 2000s. During this period, Turkey witnessed the strengthening of the de factopresidentialization of its parliamentary system, which was followed by the introduction of a new presidential system of government in 2018. This section of the present chapter shows how changes in the system of government have led to incremental changes in Turkey’s policy style. It then examines how such changes in policy style have been subject to five different processes: the externalization, politicization, privatization, Europeanization and societalization of advice.

2.1 Changes in Turkey’s System of Government

The June 2018 election resulted in the transformation of Turkey’s system of government into a presidential system against the backdrop of a hybrid regime.Footnote 1 The new system saw the abolition of the office of prime minister, to be replaced by that of the president. The officeholder also became the head of state as well as of Turkey’s government and ruling party. Traditionally, presidential systems of government come with a tradition of strong leadership, impositional and proactive policy styles and the extensive use of institutional resources (e.g. presidential decrees with the effect of laws) as tools in the appointment, dismissal, transfer and promotion of politicians, judges and senior bureaucrats (Bakir, 2020). This leads to the centralization of the core executive and the presidential bureaucracy. In this system, the centralization of the executive branch and the presidential bureaucracy offer quicker, more decisive policy responses than a parliamentary system of government. These kinds of response come about due to institutionalized political loyalty, obedience and commitment to implement the orders of the president and/or the presidential office without delay or veto. However, there are risks of policy design and implementation failures when policy problems are wrongly diagnosed, their policy solutions are mistaken and/or complementary policy instrument mixes are poorly implemented, due to pressures requiring hasty responses (Bakir, 2020). This is because (1) there is both a limited delegation of discretionary authority and autonomy to the executive branch and the bureaucracy and limited incentives for public sector actors to take discretionary action and (2) there is limited inclusiveness and social diversity in relation to the definition of problems and the articulation and deliberation of policy solutions (Bakir, 2020: 427, 429–430; see also Sobaci et al., 2018). Thus, there is limited space for genuine policy feedback and instrument calibration and potential greater risk of failure in the policy design and implementation process (Bakir, 2020: 425).

2.2 Changes in Policy Style

Turkey’s policy style, based on the country’s historical Napoleonic administrative traditions and its majoritarian political-institutional arrangements, has been characterized by “statism” under the parliamentary system of government (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019). These key pillars of that style have had two key implications for the policy process. Firstly, by concentrating all political authority, power and resources in the centre, the Napoleonic administrative tradition endowed government actors with centralized administrative power over the agenda-setting, policy formulation, decision-making and implementation processes. Secondly, majoritarian political institutions magnified the impact of the centralized administrative power on policy processes, especially when there was a single-party government in power. Typical of the statist policy styles worldwide (Squevin, 2022), Turkey’s key government actors remained the central, exclusive actors, over-determining state-society relations in hierarchical ways in policy processes. One typical characteristic of this engagement was the fact that government actors engaged with societal groups in selective ways—ultimately it was almost always government actors who defined the terms of this engagement (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019).

During the 2000s, government actors have become even more selective in their engagement with societal actors. While government actors predominate the entire policy process, their selective approach has been more evident in the agenda-setting, policy formulation and decision-making processes than in policy implementation. In the former processes, government actors have reached out to certain societal actors while freezing out others. The system of interest intermediation and representation, where societal actors compete for open access, has therefore been much less competitive. In the implementation processes, however, there has been more room for increasingly competitive forms of interaction in the interest intermediation and representation system. At this stage, the degree to which government actors have been insulated has varied depending on the agenda items. When government actors have pursued political-strategic agenda items, they have not refrained from acting unilaterally. Such engagement with societal actors has been defined on the basis of a selective approach, in that we see a monopolization of decision-making regarding who gets involved and who gets frozen out. When they pursue everyday agenda items, however, government actors may choose to engage with a wider span of societal actors. Although there has been some variation here across agenda types, there have still been discernible patterns in this engagement process, where governmental actors have been able to pick and choose those actors to be involved in the policy processes. Such selective engagement has largely resulted in the co-optation of those societal actors allowed to play a role in policy processes. In one way or another, government actors have had the last word on whether, and if so, which, on what issue, when and how to include societal actors in policy processes (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019, on the basis of Schmidt 1996).

To be sure, centralization has always been part and parcel of the statist policy style. Yet, the presentialization of the Turkish political system has strengthened the centralization tendency even further, extending the centre’s grip all the way down to processes of policy implementation and crowding out spaces for policy advice from a variety of actors in the policy cycle. Layered onto the statist administrative tradition, the president presides over the centralized hierarchical system of government and a centralized administration (Bakir, 2020). The president’s desires, preferences, choices and decisions shape how policy networks respond to policy problems. In other words, presidential policy preferences are not contested or reversed through external checks and balances by executive, legislative, judicial and/or bureaucratic actors. Thus, this is a new version of the centralization of public policymaking and the politicization of the civil service which goes beyond the traditional statist policy style. Turkey now observes the centralization of the executive, referring to the greater use of the president’s unilateral power in setting respective agendas as well as “steering their implementation through the institutions and actors of the presidential system of government” (Bakir, 2020: 428). Unsurprisingly, the central features of the current policy style include “exclusiveness” and “selectiveness” and embrace social “uniformity” “in values, religious beliefs, life circumstances, lifestyles and other aspects of the human condition” (Bakir, 2020: 427, 429–430). Policy design, thus, takes place “through ‘backyard’ presidential executive ‘offices, and embedded civil society organisations involving an exclusive group of individuals with mostly uniform rather than diverse educational backgrounds and worldviews” (Bakir, 2020: 427). Therefore, centralization and presidentialization have rendered statist selectiveness and exclusiveness even stronger.

2.3 Basics of the Policy Advisory System

The country’s predominantly statist policy style under a parliamentary system of government has shaped the ways in which the national policy advisory system operates, allowing government actors to dictate the selective terms of engagement with societal actors. Turkey’s policy advisory system thus features elements of statism reflecting the country’s overall policy style. The national policy advisory system, therefore, is characterized by an entrenched understanding of the hierarchy between government actors and advisors. In this system, government actors selectively invite in certain policy advisors while freezing out others. In contrast to pluralist policy advisory systems, prospects for competitive access are very limited.

Like all policy advisory systems, Turkey’s advisory system has also been undergoing a series of processes, albeit limited and specific to issue areas, that have affected Europe and beyond, namely, the externalization, politicization, privatization, Europeanization and societalization of advice. First, there has been an externalization of advice, where actors outside of the state bureaucracy exercise influence over the policy process (Craft & Howlett, 2013: 188). New sources of advice have emerged during the 2000s that have remained outside of the state bureaucracy. It is striking to observe elements of externalization creeping into the statist policy advisory system, where a bureaucratic machine has traditionally displayed a relatively substantial (Napoleonic) bureaucratic and administrative capacity (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019: 364–365).

Secondly, processes of externalization have been coupled with the politicization of policy advice during the 2000s (Orhan, 2018). Politicization, in this context, is a process whereby “partisan-political aspects of policy … displace non-partisan public sector sources of policy advice” (Craft & Howlett, 2013: 188). In a politicized advisory system, state actors favour “political judgement” in the policy process more than “technical or scientific evidence” (Brans et al., 2017: 5). Although elements of politicization have always been present in Turkey’s policy advisory system (Bakir & Ertan, 2018: 3), the 2000s have seen an increasing trend towards practices allowing partisan recruitment and back-door entry. The top-level appointments have become less open to competition, and even in the case of positions with technical portfolios, appointments have become increasingly less merit-based (European Commission, 2020: 12, 20). The 2000s have seen an increasing turnover rate of senior positions, which is an indicator of politicization (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019: 363–364 based on OECD, 2016: 5, 13–14). Politicization is also evident in the government’s engagement with experts in the policymaking processes. Although we do not have any direct evidence for the politicization of the advisory system based on the ProSEPS survey, the results presented below suggest that certain university professors are appointed to key positions in order to provide politicized external advice. Furthermore, other recent research shows that the government invites in a limited number of “embedded experts” in selected policymaking processes (Orhan, 2018: 133).

Thirdly, the privatization of policy advice has accompanied the first two processes. Often referred to as marketization, privatization is intricately related to processes of externalization of policy advice. Privatization is generally defined as outsourcing of “policy advice to agencies at arm’s length from government or to management consultancy firms” (Brans et al., 2017: 5). This trend is widely observed in many countries in Europe and beyond. In Turkey too, there has been a mushrooming of consulting companies providing government consultancy services over the past decade (Ministry of Development, 2018: 4; Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019: 365; Visier, 2016: 30; Bakir & Ertan, 2018: 4, 10). These consulting companies employ university professors, generally on a short-term basis in non-key expert positions. Acquiring such services through external bodies represents a channel through which advisory contents from university professors are disseminated.

Fourthly, the process of marketization has also been directly related to a fourth trend, namely, that of Europeanization, which largely takes place through the implementation of operations and projects under the EU’sInstrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) programming.Footnote 2 The IPA requires that in the implementation processes of the acquis, consultancycompanies outside of government carry out all projects and programmes. Since the early 2000s, these companies have typically relied on non-in-house technical teams composed of university professors tasked with carrying out these implementation processes since the early 2000s. Similarly, in policy evaluation exercises pertaining to EU accession, most projects and programmes funded by the EU-IPA have to be monitored and evaluated externally by consultancy companies. Political scientists in particular, and in general university professors with technical expertise in the areas covered by the EU accession chapters staff the technical teams responsible for projects and operations. In this way, they offer their services to the ambitious process of transforming Turkey’s entire public administration (Bolukbasi et al., 2018). Expertise in the technicalities of implementing the acquis communautaire therefore constitutes an asset in advice supply. This asset renders political scientists of value in the policy advisory system.

Fifth, the societalization of advice, which is common in many other European countries (Brans et al., 2017: 5), is also becoming increasingly visible in Turkey, at least at face value given the rather restrictive application of public consultation processes. In 2006, the government adopted new rules governing the drafting of legislative proposals (Resmi Gazete, 2006). These rules require public consultation with civil society organizations. Despite the implementation of these rules, results in terms of actual consultation practices have been mixed (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019). For most policy proposals, consultation is not systematically or openly carried out. In cases where consultation is carried out, it is limited to the period after the policies have already been shaped, and even then only on a selective basis (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019: 363–364 based on OECD, 2015: 34; Orhan, 2018: 133). All this does not imply that Turkey’s policy advisory system is entirely closed. In fact, the advisory system has been opening up to input from think tanks and civil society organizations since the 1990s. What is important here is that government actors in the system have become increasingly selective. Only the think tanks that have close links to the ruling government are invited to participate in policy processes (European Commission, 2020: 14).Footnote 3 The system remains effectively closed to actors that are “critical” of government policies (Doyle, 2017; Ekal, 2019; Orhan, 2018: 143).Footnote 4

3 A Locational Model of the Policy Advisory System in Turkey

This section explores Turkey’s policy advisory system with the help of the Locational Policy Advisory Systems Model developedby Blum and Brans (2017). The model locates policy advisory actors in three arenas (in this volume labelled the government arena, the academic arena and the societal arena). Political scientists employed at universities and research institutes find themselves in the academic arena, although they will venture into, or engage with, other arenas or intersections between these arenas in regard to the production and dissemination of policy advice. We shall now take a closer look at the advisory engagement of political scientists and explore the main access points for political scientists bringing expertise to policy processes and the degree of their institutionalized access.

3.1 Government Arena

Political science graduates are certainly not absent from the internal government arena. Political scientists play key roles as elected members of parliament. At the time of writing (February 2021), there are 62 members of parliament (out of 600) with undergraduate or graduate degrees in political science, public administration or political studies.Footnote 5 They also serve as ministers and deputy ministers. In the current cabinet, 2 ministers and 15 deputy ministers have undergraduate or graduate degrees in political science or related fields. What about political science academics? There have been examples of political scientists being “invited” to serve on scientific committees tasked with preparing key legal codes such as the Law on Foreigners and International Protection (Law No. 6458). Political scientists, when invited to participate in such scientific committees, also deliver hearings in parliamentary committees, especially on matters related to technical, everyday agenda items. Political scientists have also been serving as members of “specialization commissions” and “working groups” drafting background studies during the preparation of Development Plans providing strategic guidelines for public policies. The tradition of having political scientists as members of such commissions and working groups since the 1960s has helped institutionalize their advisory roles. Most recently, selected political scientists have served as members of the “inner circle”—the Policy Boards instituted under the Presidency Office in 2018 (Bakir, 2020).

3.2 Societal Arena

Political scientists may advise interest groups, trade unions, employers’ associations, consultancy firms, non-governmental organizations and citizen groups. As in the other arenas or intersections thereof, access varies with the type of agenda item at different stages of the policy process. As the policy advisory system becomes increasingly centralized, political scientists are even more selectively invited to participate, at the same time as actors in the societal arena move closer to the political centre. The degree of access has been increasing, in a selective manner, through the externalization of policy activities previously carried out by state actors. The brand names of consultancy companies have been seen as important in framing and legitimizing policies formulated by government actors. Being involved in such privately sourced advice has increasingly become an indirect advisory route for Turkish political scientists.

In policy implementation processes, political scientists can gain access to the policy advisory system with regard to implementation projects and operations funded by the EU-IPA. Political scientists may engage directly with government through research-based projects commissioned or tendered by central ministries. Yet, their involvement is becoming increasingly indirect. Most of the implementation operations and projects, as well as policy evaluation tasks, are increasingly being carried out by consultancy firms who hire political scientists as expert members of their technical teams. Political scientists’ access to the evaluation processes has been growing thanks to new rules on legislative processes (Resmi Gazete, 2006) and the launching of EU accession negotiations since the mid-2000s. These changes were designed to lead to an increase in the number of regulatory impact assessments. Despite an initial increase in such, the government’s demand for assessments has declined overall (OECD, 2019: 5).

In policy implementation and evaluation too, opportunities for political scientists’ access vary depending on the type of agenda item. On political-strategic agenda items, whether or not political scientists are invited to participate depends on partisan factors. On everyday agenda items, however, access opportunities may be greater for political scientists working with organizations that do not have strong links to the government.

3.3 Intersecting Areas

The intersecting arenas include advisory bodies and think tanks. Again, given that policy advice is increasingly becoming the exclusive preserve of the “inner circle” under the presidential system, divergent individual, organizational and/or collective actors with diverse intentions and preferences are excluded from participation in the policy advisory system. This not only restricts membership of advisory bodies to a select few political scientists but also limits their involvement to the type of think tank the government chooses to listen to or even co-opt for its own political purposes.

4 The Policy Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Turkey

4.1 The ProSEPS Survey Instrument

The ProSEPS survey was based on an online questionnaire sent out to over 11,000 political scientists in 39 countries. The average response rate for the survey was 20.7%, and valid responses number 2354 after cleaning. Once the questionnaire items had been finalized by the research team, they were translated into Turkish. The questionnaire was administered to 579 political scientists, and the process was concluded in February 2019. The response rate in Turkey was 16.8%, with an overall total of 97 responses recorded.

One key objective of the ProSEPS survey was to identify the predominant role of political scientists in national policy advisory systems. The ideal-typical roles are the pure academic, the expert, the opinionating scholar and the public intellectual. In the rest of this section, we explore a set of characteristics of the political scientists assuming policy advisory roles, the recipients of policy advice, the types of advisory activities, the predominant roles of political scientists in Turkey’s policy advisory system and the normative positions and motivation for engaging in the provision of policy advice.

4.2 Key Characteristics of Political Scientists Assuming Advisory Roles

The political scientists in Turkey who participated in the survey do not differ significantly from their counterparts in Europe in demographic terms. The median age of the sample of political scientists in Turkey is 44 years, compared to 46 years in the overall sample. As to gender, a little over 28% of political scientists in the Turkey sample are women. This is slightly higher than the overall sample percentage of 25%.

In terms of their educational attainment, all of the political scientists who participated in the survey in Turkey hold a PhD. When it comes to their employment status, two-thirds of the respondents (66%) in Turkey are employed on a permanent contract; 25% of the Turkish sample work under a non-permanent contract. Both figures are almost identical to those in the overall sample.

The composition of the specialization subfields reported by political scientists who participated in the survey is rather similar to that of the overall sample. An overwhelming majority of respondents in Turkey specialize in three sub-disciplines: international relations (31% in Turkey as opposed to 20% overall), comparative politics (30% in Turkey as opposed to 28% overall) and political theory (21% in Turkey as opposed to 13% overall). The subfields that are represented the least in the Turkish sample are political economy (4%), local government (4%) and gender studies (0%). One visible difference between participants from Turkey compared to the overall sample is in the field of security studies, with 9% of participants from Turkey specialized in that field compared to 4% of those in the overall sample, which may largely be accounted for by Turkey’s geopolitical position.

In terms of channels of policy advice, political scientists were posed a question in the survey about the channels through which they provide advice. The results would seem to indicate that political scientists in Turkey prefer traditional channels, such as publications and research articles, with 36% of respondents declaring they use this channel at least once a year. This preference is in keeping with the corresponding findings for their colleagues in Europe. This channel is followed by research reports (22.7%) and policy reports, briefs and memos (21.6% less frequently than once a year). The least preferred channels for providing policy advice in Turkey on a yearly basis are blogs and socialmedia (7%).

As regards the level of governance at which advice is provided, of those who answered this question, Turkish political scientists declared that they provide the majority of their advice at national (44.3%) and sub-national (28.5%) levels. Advice is provided at EU and transnational levels significantly less frequently, amounting to, respectively, 6.2% and 9.3% of the overall advice given by political scientists in Turkey. These findings are broadly in line with those for the overall sample of European political scientists.

The level of internationalization of political scientists is a fundamental aspect we explored in ProSEPS. One key indicator of this level is their experience in working abroad. Of the political scientists who participated in the survey, 32% had worked abroad. The level of internationalization of political scientists in Turkey, measured in this way, is therefore not too different from that of their counterparts in Europe (at an average of 36% for the overall sample).

4.3 Recipients of Advice

In terms of demand for the advisory activities of political scientists, the sample in Turkey significantly differs from the overall sample. Table 14.1 shows, in percentages, the actors with whom political scientists engage when giving policy advice. Over a third of political scientists in Turkey give advice to civil society organizations (42.2%), think tanks (34.0%) and civil servants (34.0%). While these figures are not much different from those for the entire sample, Turkey’s respondents provide much less advice to executive politicians (only 6.2 %) than do their European colleagues (29.6%). They also turn significantly less to legislative politicians. While a little over 10% of political scientists in Turkey provide advice to legislative politicians, this figure stands at 30% for the overall sample. Figures are higher for advising political parties, but at 19.5%, it is still well below the 28% seen for the overall sample.

Table 14.1 Recipients of advisory activities %—Turkey
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Two enigmas merit further investigation here. Firstly, why do Turkish political scientists give so much less advice to political actors than do their European counterparts? Secondly, why is it that at the same time, they provide advice to civil society organizations almost as much as their counterparts in Europe do?

In addressing these two enigmas, we take as our starting point the institutional traits of Turkey’s policy advisory system. As discussed above, government actors in Turkey hold the power to be highly selective in their engagement with all actors in the advisory system. In the Turkish policy advisory system, government actors are in a position to dictate who gets invited to participate in, or remains frozen out of, the various stages of the policy process. The state is not entirely closed to the input of advisors; however, governmental actors have the last word when it comes to selecting which policy advisors to engage and when. Political scientists, like actors in the societal arena too, are therefore not operating in a competitive policy advisory system, even though more than one in three of the political scientists in the sample (40.2%) has provided advisory services to different government actors (civil servants and executive politicians) at least once. As in all engagements with non-governmental actors, the type of policy and the type of advice given are determined by governmental actors. On political-strategic issues particularly, only a small, handpicked clique of advisors, each very close to one other key governmental actor, are invited to provide advice. With regard to everyday agenda items, on the other hand, the pool of advisers is likely to be broader.

What would then explain the very high percentages of political scientists providing advice to civil society organizations (42.2%) and think tanks (34.0%)? While these percentages are not very different from those in the overall sample in purely numerical terms, there may still be some qualitative differences given Turkey’s presidential policy advisory system. It might be that political scientists provide more advice to civil society organizations and think tanks simply because they are no longer being called upon to advise executive and legislative politicians, and thus, they turn to their second best outlet for their advisory services—in this case civil society organizations and think tanks.

An alternative explanation may be found in the changing nature of civil society organizations and think thanks in Turkey. Recent research on civil society suggests that the distance between these actors and governmental actors has diminished and that several of them are being increasingly co-opted by the state (Paker et al., 2013; Yabanci, 2019; Massicard & Visier, 2019). Moreover, funding such organizations would free state agencies from the usual administrative and financial constraints that come with directly purchasing advisory services (Yülek, 2008; Yıldız, 2013; Ministry of Development, 2018). Some of the advice political scientists provide to civil society organizations and think tanks may thus be, albeit indirectly, targeting governmental actors (Orhan, 2018). Again, we expect this to be so in the case of everyday agenda items, where governmental actors take advice from experts beyond their close inner circles of traditional advisors. While the ProSEPS survey does not provide any hard evidence of this, at least some of the advice (with indeed the highest frequencies in the Turkish sample) given to civil society organizations and think thanks, we believe, may indirectly be aimed for governmental actors.

Whether they end up with their second best recipients, or actually get to advice government actors albeit indirectly, political scientists find themselves in a buyer’s market institutionally shaped by the country’s presidential policy advisory system, with government actors hierarchically positioned at the centre, calling the shots on which political scientist to invite in, on what issue, when and how to include him (mostly) or her in the policy process.

4.4 Types of Advisory Activity

The survey’s results with regard to the types of advisory activity engaged in by political scientists may further illustrate the centralized nature of Turkey’s policy advisory system. Table 14.2 shows that one of the most frequent advisory activities engaged in by political scientists in Turkey is the provision of value judgements and normative arguments, together with the evaluation of existing policies and the examination of the causes and consequences of policy problems at least once in the last three years. The fact that two-thirds (66.6%) of all political scientists in Turkey in the sample provide value judgements and normative arguments stands in marked contrast to the reluctance of their European colleagues—less than one in three (32.0%)—to do so.

Table 14.2 Frequency and type of advice % (N)—Turkey
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The tendency of political scientists in Turkey to concern themselves very much with providing value judgements and normative statements may offer a clue to the nature of the engagement in the policy advisory system. In order to be invited to participate, advisors in the policy advisory system are more likely to be expected to provide endorsement, validation and support of and for the president’s line and that of the presidential office. This may also be interpreted as a sign of the politicization that has been characterizing developments in Europe (see Chap. 2). Other than this, the Turkish political scientists in the sample do not behave much differently from their colleagues in Europe in terms of their activities related to consultancy and advisory services and the making of forecasts and/or the carrying out of polls, both of which score the lowest in the types of advisory activity engaged in.

4.5 The Predominant Type

Table 14.3 shows that, based on the operational definition of ideal types presented in Chap. 2 of this book, roughly one out of two political scientists (52.6%) in Turkey who participated in the survey are opinionating scholars. These political scientists mostly provide informal advice on a very frequent basis to politicians and policymakers, journalists and the wider audience. These opinionating scholars use all available channels in order to provide advice, including talking to advice recipients directly either in person, by phone or email. They rely on opinion-editorial and newspapers columns, appear on TV and radio interviews and actively use social media and the Internet, rather than producing extensive published material.

Table 14.3 Advisory roles in proportion to overall sample—Turkey
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The centralized, selective nature of the statist policy advisory system provides key government actors with considerable room to use their discretionary powers. This opens up avenues for the frequent informal advice that opinionating scholars are known for. When recipients of advice are civil society organizations and think tanks, opinionating scholars find it convenient to provide their advice through informal channels. Table 14.3 also shows that the share of opinionating scholars in all political scientists in Turkey (52.6%) is not much different than the share of opinionating scholars in Europe (48.7%).

Table 14.3 also shows that only about one in ten (11.3%) political scientists takes on the role of expert in Turkey. Such experts offer advice on a variable basis, and they do so formally and usually when asked to do so. The advice, which is usually empirical research or applied research based, is offered to policymakers in the public administration, on committees and in think tanks. Advice is provided through direct or indirect publications such as research papers, memos, reports and strategy papers. Dwarfed in terms of numbers by opinionating scholars, technical experts are likely to play key advisory roles in policy processes concerning in particular the everyday items on Turkey’s policy advisory system agenda. The low number of experts among political scientists in Turkey also stands in contrast with much higher numbers of experts (26.6%) among political scientists in Europe. The fact that experts are heavily outnumbered by other advisory types in Turkey is in line with the finding above that there are significantly more political scientists in Turkey’s political advisory system, who provide value judgements and normative statements, than their colleagues in policy advisory systems in Europe.

Not all political scientists in the sample in Turkey engage with the country’s policy advisory system. Table 14.3 also shows that almost a third of political scientists (32%) are pure academics, that is, scholars who are mostly preoccupied with their academic activities. This percentage is higher than the equivalent figure for the overall sample (20.3%). While some of these pure academics in Turkey may be deliberately refraining from engaging with the policy advisory system, there may be others who would have played more active roles had they been invited in or not frozen out by governmental actors.

Among the ideal types, the least frequent (4.1%) category in Turkey in terms of advising activity is the public intellectual, and this ratio is similar in the entire sample of political scientists across Europe.

In terms of the gender balance across ideal types of advisory role, the few public intellectuals are all men. Most strikingly, by far the highest share of Turkish female political scientists are pure academics, who never engage in any advising activity whatsoever. Only a few female political scientists engage in policy advisory roles. This means that the majority of women political scientists in Turkey either refrain from playing policy advisory roles or are not invited to do so.

4.6 Normative Perceptions of Policy Advice Giving

When asked about the roles that political scientists should play as policy advisors, the ProSEPS survey points to mixed results (Table 14.4). Nine out of ten respondents (90.7%) believe that political scientists should become involved in policymaking. Moreover, the percentage of those who believe they have a professional obligation to engage in public debate (87.6%) is almost as high. The fact that almost all political scientists approve of involvement in policymaking attests to their sense of public mission. This is not surprising given the statist nature of the country’s policy advisory system, where governmental actors represent the ultimate authority. The sense of public mission is also evident in the very high number of political scientists who feel a professional obligation to engage in public debate.

Table 14.4 Normative views on policy advice % (N)—Turkey
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Despite this strong sense of their public mission, when it comes to engaging with actors directly almost a third of political scientists report hesitance. The survey results show that only 70.1% of political scientists agree that political scientists should directly engage with policy actors. The most polarizing statement seems to be that political scientists should offer evidence-based advice but not be directly involved in policymaking—more than half (57.8%) of the respondents agree, while another 40.1% disagree, revealing significant levels of hesitance. Such hesitance may stem from the increasing politicization of the policy advisory system—political scientists may feel less comfortable in engaging with policy actors whom they view to be politicized.

5 Conclusions

This chapter aimed at exploring the changing features of the policy advisory system in Turkey and the role political scientists play in that system. The literature has not yet classified policy advisory systems on the basis of their institutionalized features. Since a national policy advisory system is framed by an overall policy style, we build on the literature on policy styles to explore the key institutional features of Turkey’s policy advisory system. The recent literature shows that the policy style in Turkey has been changing as the system of government has been undergoing centralization. Over-determining state-society relations in hierarchical ways, it is the president domineering governmental actors who increasingly define the terms of engagement with societal actors in policy processes.

The changing policy style shapes a national policy advisory system based on a non-competitive, exclusive, uniform, hierarchical engagement between governmental actors and advisors. These rules of the game apply to the political scientists taking roles in the policy process. In the advisory system too, therefore, the president and the other principal actors in his “inner circle” have the last word on selectively inviting certain policy advisors to engage with them, whilst freezing out others. In policymaking processes, the policy advisory system remains highly selective, and advisors cannot openly compete for access to that system. The dominant central features of the emerging policy advisory system are it being exclusive to the aforesaid inner circle and it embracing the uniformity of belief systems, particularly as regards political-strategic agenda items. However, policy implementation processes may offer somewhat greater scope for more inclusive and divergent forms of interaction with regard to everyday agenda items. Like their European counterparts, Turkey’s policy advisory system has also been undergoing a series of changes, including the externalization, politicization, privatization, Europeanization and societalization of advice. These processes of change seemed to have been layered with exclusion and uniformization, hence strengthening the ever-centralized features of Turkey’s advisory system, rather than moving it in the direction of competitive pluralism.

According to the ProSEPS survey, a typical political scientist in Turkey who provides policy advice is a male opinionating scholar offering mainly informal face-to-face advice, mostly to civil society organizations,think tanks and civil servants. He is an expert on international relations, comparative politics and political theory. Political scientists in Turkey who participated in the survey do not differ from their counterparts in Europe with regard to their demographic characteristics, educational attainment, employment status and specialized subfields. Like their colleagues in Europe, respondents mainly use informal channels. The level of governance also does not differ significantly between political scientists in Turkey and their colleagues in Europe. Respondents provide most of their advice at the national level, followed by the sub-national level. The level of internationalization of political scientists in Turkey and Europe, too, is very similar.

With regard to recipients of advice, there is a striking difference between the two groups in terms of the advice they provide to executive politicians, legislative politicians and political parties. Significantly lower numbers of political scientists in Turkey provide advice to these categories of recipients than their counterparts in Europe. What unites political scientists in Turkey with their colleagues in Europe is that most respondents in both Turkey and Europe report that they give advice to civil servants. An equal share of political scientists in Turkey and Europe provide advice to civil society organizations and think tanks, too. Advice to civil society organizations and think tanks in Turkey, which have increasingly been taken over by the centralizing government, may actually end up being provided to government actors, albeit indirectly.

This chapter presents the findings of an exploratory case study of Turkey’s policy advisory system and the advisory role of the country’s political scientists. Further research is called for regarding the ways in which the policy advisory system is being transformed as it gets exposed to the externalization, politicization, privatization, Europeanization and societalization of advice. We would also invite scholars to explore the aspects of continuity and change in the advisory roles of political scientists in this hybrid regime, within the context of an increasingly centralized policy advisory system that political scientists are all the time more selectively invited to participate in.