Limitaciones de la autonomía de la voluntad

In July 2016, three days after the coup attempt failed, I was in Istanbul conducting interviews and heading to Ankara for fieldwork. After the initial 10 days I spent in Turkey right after the failed coup, I returned to Turkey for three weeks in July 2017 to conduct more interviews in Istanbul and Ankara. During these periods of time I was able to witness the political happenings firsthand and discuss these with AKP officials, Ministry of Internal Affairs Officials as well as senior bureaucrats at Turkey’s elite civil service training institute, Public Administration Institute for Turkey and Middle East (TODAIE). What I present, in this and the next section, are findings from key personnel interviews and observations I made in the field.

Immediately after the coup failed, the AKP moved to suspend operations of the Gendarmerie forces and place their assets as well as personnel under protective custody of the Military. These forces were the ones that launched the coup attempt and had used their assets to attack Ankara’s Parliament building. AKP also moved to take over all educational institutions, at home and abroad, aligned with the Gülen Movement. Initially the government took over the

institutions and shut them down pending investigations but eventually opened some of them back up under the control of loyalist businesses or the local government.

The most complex part of the post-coup undertaking was the purge in civilian bureaucracy. From 2010 till 2016, AKP had aggressively aligned itself with the Gülen Movement and stacked the judiciary and civil services with their people. The purge of 2010 had taken apart the Kemalist secular bureaucratic elite networks and replaced them Gülenist ones. The politicization of the bureaucracy at the time had borne fruit for the AKP as it helped them weaken the military elites. However, in 2016, AKP relied on its party members who were former bureaucrats as well as whatever was left of the secular Kemalists in the bureaucracy to keep the country running while purges were happening (Government Official 1, 2017; Government Official 2, 2017; AKP Official 1, 2016).

But by 2017 the purges were nearly complete and what was left of the bureaucracy was a skeletal structure. Close to 75% of upper and mid-level bureaucrats had been purged between July 2016 and July 201762. The shortage was worst at the local government level i.e. city/town management and the judiciary. Severe shortages were also present in planning and development, infrastructure management, education, health care, agriculture and internal affairs (Government Official 1, 2017; Government Official 2, 2017). To fill these shortages, institutions like TODAIE, that trained Turkish bureaucrats for various roles were asked to increase their training programs and fulfill the needs of newer recruits. The concern about the newer recruits was that as they were

62 _{Figures based on interviews with Director General of TOADAIE who explained that they were}

having to run p to 6 concurrent sessions to train new bureaucrats who were hurriedly recruited mostly based on their loyalty to the AKP.

being inducted through a shortened and less strenuous process, their performance and capacity would not be the same as someone who was top of their class.

As the Deputy Governor of Ankara at the time explained, the problem was that most of those being inducted were not qualified enough and lacked relevant experience in the government service to take up positions of even middle management. What made the situation more complex was that most of these people were not being recruited through open calls for applications but through ministry’s recommendations (Government Official 2, 2017). This meant that AKP ministers were sending lists to institutions like TODAIE of people they wanted trained in order to be put on the job. Normal training sessions took anywhere between 9 to 12 months but under pressure from the purges, the training was cut down to 12 weeks for up to six simultaneous sessions. According to officials, effectively AKP was repeating what they had done in 2010 i.e. packing the civil service with AKP loyalists (Government Official 1, 2017). By doing so, what AKP effectively did was hurt the quality of training and bring down the overall credibility of the bureaucracy. Instead of being professional and impersonal with a focused mission, the new recruits are focused on maintaining loyalty to the ruling coalition rather than focusing on their jobs.

Unfortunately, these concerns played out after the 2017 referendum and the recent 2019 local government elections where voting stopped and severe election irregularities occurred systemically to help AKP win in tight races except in Istanbul where AKP lost even in a reelection63 (Klimek et al, 2018).

63 _{The irregularities were so widespread that even after losing Istanbul and Ankara, AKP}

demanded a recount and refused to accept the results in Istanbul until the relevant authorities, which happen to have been mostly hired after the purge of 2016/17.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/world/europe/turkey-referendum-is-haunted-by- allegations-of-voter-fraud.html The problem time and time again with studying Turkey is the extent to which AKP has turned it in to a one-party state. The fact that elections happens, and the

In essence then, what AKP managed to do was to greatly limit institutional autonomy while also changing the quality of the bureaucracy to a point they are no longer able to play a stabilizing role during times of governance crises.

5.4 Testing the Theory

To test my theory in this case, I chose two key turning points in Turkey’s recent history; the 2010 purge after the alleged failed coup attempt by Ergenkon64 _{and the failed 2016 coup}

attempt by Gülenists in the military. The reason I chose these two instances to test my theory on was because they reshaped how Turkey was governed and created a new status quo that initially was more democratic but quickly devolved into an autocratic regime. And throughout these shifts, there was no stabilizing force in place to provide the necessary governance stability needed for the economy and political discourse to survive. Instead, as a result of these two instances, Turkey is left more polarized while the economy slowed down considerably with the Turkish Lira losing nearly 50% of its value against the US Dollar.

The post 2010 scenario is an excellent example of how the role of the bureaucratic elites changed in the national governance as a result of loss of institutional autonomy. The post 2016 scenario is a unique instance where the government has the opportunity to fundamentally change the quality of bureaucracy and chooses to do so by bringing it down instead of improving it. In most cases the opposite happens i.e. ruling coalition’s focus on improving or at least sustaining

opposition has any fighting chance is remarkable testament to the Turkish people’s commitment to democracy.

64 _{The trial has since been assailed as nothing more than a show trial aimed at killing army’s}

influence in politics https://www.amnestyusa.org/inside-one-of-the-most-important-court-cases- in-turkish-history/

the quality of bureaucracy. Instead in Turkey, the AKP revamps the professional system of bureaucracy and transforms it into an extension of the party, at least at the federal level.

The data I am using for to create the network analyses for both these cases is based on my fieldwork in Turkey conduced in 2016 and 2017. I visited Turkey twice, once a week after the failed coup of 2016 and then after a year in 2017, weeks before the referendum. Both times, I was based in Ankara with visits to Istanbul. I was able to interview government officials, including senior bureaucrats, retired bureaucrats, academics, politicians and even retired generals. I was provided access to the Ministry of Internal Affairs as well as the Turkish Institute of Public Administration. In addition to this, I had access to official documents relating to the reorganization plan after the purges were completed. These interviews and discussions are the basis of my data. As in the case of Pakistan, these discussions were immensely helpful in providing nuance and context to the political changes Turkey has undergone within the last decade or so. As explain in chapter three, the information that was collected through the interviews provided details of the relationship between different stakeholder in the governance system i.e. how they are connected, what kind of important they have the system and what decisions are they taking.

While I spent time at a host of ministries, for the purpose of testing my theory, I chose to focus on working of five key ministries that make up bulk of day to governance. Ministries of Internal Affairs, Trade, Finance & Treasury, Justice and Industry are analyzed for this purpose. I chose the five ministries as they run the most critical government functions and their structures are replicated across all other ministries.