TURKEY

The Undersecretariat of State Planning Organization (formerly SPO) was established in 1960 as the major consulting body to the prime minister’s office in issues of sectoral planning and development. Planning is a part of the constitutional policy framework (Article 41 Protection of the Family, Article 45 Protection of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and of Persons Engaged in These Activities, Article 56 Health Services and Conservation of the Environment and Article 166 on Planning). According to Law No. 5018 on Public Financial Management and Control of 2003 and Bylaw on Principles and Procedures for Strategic Planning in Public Administrations of 2006, all public institutions, including municipalities and special provincial administrations (Law Nos. 5216, 5302 and 5393), but excluding regulatory and supervisory bodies, must prepare strategic plans. The basic objective of strategic planning is to establish an institutional connection between plans, programs and budgets. In this respect, performance programs and activity reports are complimentary. Recently, all ministerial bodies also designated a separate department for developing strategy and coordination. However, these are not yet sufficiently functional. The General Directorate of Budget and Fiscal Control has prepared a guide for performance-based budgeting. The Department of Strategy Development, associated with the prime minister’s office, is basically entitled to monitor the implementation of legislation and plans, define the issues related to implementation, define the guidelines for any relevant studies and coordinate the activities.
Since the first phase of strategic planning (2006 – 2010) was not supported by performance-based budgeting, and lacked activity reports prepared according to the legal requirements, no clear positive impact was evident. Even in crucial institutions, institutional capacity is not fully satisfactory for full-fledged strategic planning. No cumulative statistics about the frequency of meetings between strategic planning staff and the head of government exist, but these meetings were generally held once a year, especially during the preparation period. According to the results of a survey (Erkan, 2008), in many public administration sectors there has been an ongoing process of restructuring and regulatory reform. It is argued that these changes may result in changes in mission, which will definitely influence strategic planning processes negatively over time.

The incumbent government issued an emergency action plan in 2002 when it first came to power, underlining the fact that all regulatory reforms would be initiated in close consultation with civil society. During the first years of the government, many new regulations were prepared in consultation with civil society organizations, including academics. Governments occasionally establish “scientific committees” to prepare a draft report or “justification” paper to accompany policy implementation.
There are also academic members in the cabinet – mainly in the ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, labor and social security – who can encourage academic ideas and approaches in the course of governmental policy-making. The government occasionally asks academics to prepare opinions for “justification” purposes, or to help with surveys or reports on individual issues, but it is unclear how far these contributions in fact influence policy. There is also a trend in the executive branch for many positions to be filled by civil servants with an academic degree.

The prime minister, as chairman of the Council of Ministers, ensures cooperation among the ministries, and supervises the implementation of the government’s general policy (Article 112 of the constitution). The Undersecretariat of the Prime Ministry maintains coordination and cooperation among and between the ministries. The General Directorate of Laws and Resolutions of the Prime Ministry examines the congruity of draft bills, decrees, statutes, regulations and Council of Ministers resolutions with the constitution, as well as reviewing laws, general principles of law, development plans and programs, and the government program. This unit is the primary government entity in terms of drafting and coordinating new regulations. It is hard to say that all draft bills are the product of expert advice, however. During the period under review, numerous adjustments to draft bills during their approval by parliament showed that this standard was only partly met.
Recently, the Economy Coordination Board, composed of the minister of finance and state ministers in charge of economic affairs, was established in order to evaluate economic and financial matters.
Regarding the adequacy of draft bills and their correspondence with policy objectives, the government office is only rarely equipped to evaluate the content of line ministry proposals appropriately.
However, due to the strong position of the bureaucracy in Turkey, conflicts are more likely to occur along the fault lines associated with the bureaucracy rather than between party politicians – thus, between an undersecretary and minister, rather than between ministries and the prime minister’s office.

According to Article 112 of the constitution, the prime minister, as chairman of the Council of Ministers, is tasked with ensuring cooperation among the ministers, and with supervising the implementation of the government’s general policy. The members of the Council of Ministers are jointly responsible for the implementation of this policy. Each minister is responsible to the prime minister and is responsible for the conduct of affairs under his or her jurisdiction and the acts and activities of his or her subordinates. The prime minister ensures that the ministers exercise their functions in accordance with the constitution and the laws, and can take corrective measures to this end. Considering the provision of Article 109, under which the prime minister appoints ministers, his/her oversight power over ministerial proposals is evident. However, ministries have been able to exercise greater influence during the periods of coalition government. In order to prevent this, a special coordinating body composed of the ministers from the coalition parties sets the agenda for the cabinet meetings.

The prime minister’s office (PMO) has a twofold role in the preparation of draft bills. On the one hand, as mentioned above, it has to check the congruity of the laws from a legal point of view. On the other, the PMO collects ministries’ legal and political opinions along with opinions from civil society stakeholders, interest and lobby groups, expert groups and institutions. Thus, the PMO is always directly involved in the preparation of policy proposals at a relatively early stage.

Cabinet committees have been utilized primarily by coalition governments, but even the single-party government of the Justice and Development Party has established some committees composed of ministers and experts or bureaucrats when an important and common issue is under consideration. A good example of this is the interministerial anti-terror commission, which convenes under the leadership of the minister of interior affairs, with the participation of senior officials from the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice, as well as other security departments. However, in the Turkish governmental system, such committees are in fact rare both in single-party and coalition governments.

Preparing cabinet meetings is the primary task of the senior bureaucrats, including the undersecretaries, deputy undersecretaries, general directors and so on. Undersecretaries are under the command of the relevant minister and his or her aide, and execute ministerial services on behalf of the minister and in accordance with his or her directives and orders. Although this is a political position, it tends to be assigned by merit and with an eye to careers. There are also deputy undersecretaries in the ministries who may help their superiors in conducting ministerial affairs.

Coordination is achieved by ad hoc committees composed of civil servants from the various ministries. However, sometimes instead of cooperation or coordination, one ministry’s proposal can be blocked or opposed by another ministry’s staff. In such cases, political coordinating bodies or the cabinet itself deal directly with the issue, regardless of the type of government in power.

There are always informal mechanisms in governments, whether single party or coalition. These core groups are composed of senior party people, classmates or peers. However, these bodies basically design the general framework of an issue in consultation with the experts, while civil servants develop proposals and finally the upper administrative echelon finalizes the policy outcome.
The higher echelons of the ruling party in particular, in line with the relatively high number of younger ministers who have considerable experience in their fields, form a thick network of communication and debate, and contribute substantially to the preparation of policy.

Since 2007, regulatory impact assessment (RIA) has been required for all legislation (laws, decrees and other regulatory procedures) having a financial impact of at least TRY 10 million, excluding issues relating to national security, the draft budget, or final accounts, (under Article 24 of Regulation No. 4821 on the Procedure and Principles of Preparing Legislation, dated December 12, 2005, followed by a resolution of the Council of Ministers published in the Official Gazette on February 17, 2006 (No. 26083)). The prime minister’s office also issued a circular on practices of regulatory impact assessment on April 3, 2007, providing a guide on preparation of the assessments. However, it is hard to say that RIA is systematically applied in Turkey.

RIA has only recently been introduced to Turkish public administration. Due to the heavy cost in money and time of preparing RIAs, there are few examples available. Therefore, it is hard to say whether they are performed fully, partially or poorly. The cited work is prepared according to the requirements, but cannot be generalized.
It seems that when RIA is applied in Turkey, it defines the purposes of and the need for regulation in a clear, concise and specific manner. The framework for RIA was hammered out in close consultation with the European Union, with a review of best practices in a large number of European countries carried out by the State Planning Organization.

There are few examples of RIA being performed Turkey. Therefore, it is hard to say whether it is carried out fully, partially or poorly. In the past, feasibility reports have been prepared by experts for large-scale public administration projects, and some of these included alternative policy solutions in the form of cost-benefit analysis. It is expected that with the introduction of RIA, the Turkish public administration will help to develop an understanding of alternative policy options’ pros and cons.
The official RIA template calls for the analysis of various options including “do nothing.” However, the application of RIA is still in its infancy, and nothing can yet be said with respect to how comprehensively RIA will be applied in the near future.

The incumbent government declared in its emergency action plan that it would regularly consult with civil society, but has largely failed to fulfill this promising objective. The Law on the Establishment, Principles and Methods of Work of the Economic and Social Council established a continuous and permanent consultative body, tasked with establishing a platform for dialogue, compromise and cooperation on economic and social issues. However, the council has rarely convened (on general matters, tax and social security bills) and has not played an effective role in the law-making process. In short, the government’s consultation with non-governmental institutions is rare, insufficient and ineffective in the process of policy-making. On the other hand, the government generally has closer contact with conservative individual actors and social organizations such as MÜSİAD or HAK-İŞ. Instead of developing relations with existing organizations, it has created its own so-called civil society organizations.
A much-used and much-debated term during the period under investigation was “açılım,” meaning “the opening.” The word relates to a new government policy that accepts various societal groups that often had been more or less sidelined as stakeholders, legal interest groups, dialogue partners and thus equal citizens of the republic. Beginning in 2008, the government initiated a series of conferences with heterodox Muslim Alevi communities, the deputies of the pro-Kurdish Societal Democracy Party (DTP), and representatives of Roma communities.
Considering the “democratic opening” project, the government consulted with several other stakeholder groups in society. However, no concrete policy outcome has resulted from this process. It is argued that Kurdish broadcasts on public radio and TV stations and later on private channels, as well as the return of some Kurdish people from Iraq, had been planned earlier at the top level. Therefore, it was perceived that the government did not consult but rather sought legitimacy for already-defined policies.

The unquestioned authority and leadership of the prime minister by and large ensures that the government speaks with one voice, despite the different or even opposing interests of one or another ministry on any particular occasion.
There is a spokesman for the Council of Ministers who makes public declarations on behalf of the council. However, it has been evident that some important ministers make contradictory private statements to other members of the government. A spokesperson’s office was also established for the prime minister, which caused further complications for the coordination of government communication.

Neither the opposition parties nor public opinion represent the most serious constraints for the incumbent government in pursuing policy. The real obstacles to the implementation of government policy in Turkey are the so-called veto players, the military and the high judiciary. On April 27, 2007, the military released a memorandum warning the government that it would protect the secular nature of the state. At the end of March 2008, the chief prosecutor appealed to the Constitutional Court to close down the governing AKP party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which had gained a very strong 47% of the vote in parliamentary elections eight months previously. On July 30, 2008, the Constitutional Court called the AKP a “focus of anti-secular activities.” However, the court refrained from the immediate closure of the party, saying that for the time being, it posed only a limited danger. Thus, the AKP was clearly in a delicate position, particularly in the first half of the period under investigation. Not long earlier, in June 2008, the Constitutional Court had already seriously limited the right of the parliament to change the constitution.
The resistance of the military, the high judiciary and the support they have from opposition parties were responsible for the government’s failure to make head scarves acceptable at universities, to put graduates of imam schools on an equal footing with graduates of other high schools, and its inability to take anything more than symbolic steps toward the solution of the Kurdish question. However, the government was by and large successful in pursuing its policy in the fields of economics, social security, taxes and foreign affairs.

Ministerial compliance is directly dependent upon the type of government, either single party or coalition. A single-party government with a strong party leadership and high demand for ministerial positions among members provides strong incentives for the promotion of the government program. In the case of coalition government, ministers primarily seek to promote their own future electoral success. With strong leadership keeping cabinet members subordinate, it is difficult for even those ministers who are professionals in their field to come to the forefront.
The personal charisma of the incumbent prime minister and political parties’ tendencies to leave personnel decisions to party leaders prevent ministers from pursuing their own interests during their time in office. The AKP government has made it even more difficult for ministers to follow their own individual agendas. A number of key ministries today are under the leadership of ministers that hold substantial professional expertise but lack almost any support from the party apparatus, leaving them completely at the mercy of the prime minister. Among these ministers at the time of writing were Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, State Minister and EU chief negotiator Egemen Bağış, State Minister in Charge of Economy Ali Babacan, Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek, State Minister Mehmet Aydın, Education Minister Nimet Çubukçu, Minister for Family and Youth Selma Aliye Kavaf, and Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay.

The activities of line ministries are not monitored regularly or systematically. In some cases, the ministerial bureaucracy resists the policy of the government without serious consequences, particularly in issues of democratization. Cases of pure mismanagement seldom occur.
In general, however, ministries work in cooperation with the prime minister’s office, both because a single-party government is in power, and because the ruling party has staffed the leading ministerial bureaucratic posts with political allies.

Although the ministry organizational structure provides a hierarchical monitoring mechanism, the effectiveness of these mechanisms depends heavily on the personal experience and attitudes of the individual agents. The Internal Audit Coordination Board, affiliated with the Ministry of Finance, was established under Article 66 of the Public Financial Management and Control Law (Law No. 5018), and is tasked with ensuring cooperation with the audit units of public administrative bodies, and with making proposals for eliminating fraud or irregularities. Strategic planning and activity reports, if implemented properly, shall provide further mechanisms for monitoring.

Local administrative bodies, mainly municipal governments, do not have sufficient financial resources to finance the tasks assigned to them by law. Many have declared bankruptcy, and their borrowing constitutes a large share of Turkey’s total medium- and long-term debt. In short, the central administration (mainly through the Bank of Provinces) is still the major funding source for local governments. As of 2009, local administrations as a whole have TRY 39.5 billion in internal and TRY 5.8 billion in external debt. Support for the Infrastructure of Villages (KÖYDES) Project has been provided by the incumbent government since 2005, with a total of TRY 5.7 billion allocated from the central administration budget for these activities. The incumbent government has been accused of taking partisan approach toward the distribution of such funds, with respect to municipal governments controlled by the opposition parties. Financial decentralization has been a major issue under discussion.
Until 2009, transfers from the central government to municipalities via the Bank of Provinces were calculated solely according to the municipalities’ population. This system did not contribute to the leveling of the huge development differences in different regions of the country. Since then, a new model has been adopted that combines the number of inhabitants with development indices. However, the new model has not eased the difficult financial situation of Turkey’s municipalities, which are seriously indebted to central government institutions such as the Finance Ministry, the Treasury, the Social Security Institution and the Bank of Provinces. Total municipality debt rose from TRY 30.7 billion in 2006 to TRY 44.3 billion in 2008, with no improvement evident in 2009.

The Municipality Law grants local governments only very limited competences, and places them additionally under the jurisdiction of provincial governors. An amendment authorizing local governments to open preschool education institutions in 2004 was annulled by the Constitutional Court the following year, with the court arguing that the provision threatened the unitary character of the Turkish state. This mindset controls the relationship between the central and local governments, which are accused – not always unjustifiably – of being centers of corruption and real-estate speculation.
According to Article 127 of the constitution, local administrative bodies are public corporate entities established to meet the common local needs of the inhabitants of provinces, municipal districts and villages, whose decision-making organs are determined by the electorate as described in law, and whose principles of structure are also determined by law. However, the central administration has the power of administrative trusteeship over the local governments, under a framework of legal principles and procedures designed to ensure the functioning of local services in conformity with the principle of administrative unity and integrity, to secure uniform public service, to safeguard the public interest and to meet local needs in an appropriate manner. Although the constitution says that municipalities are to be allocated financial resources in proportion to their functions, there is a perpetual lack of money. In addition, they need the approval of the central government for many issues.
A recent example in Istanbul illustrates the impact of the central government’s involvement in local affairs. Although the Istanbul Metropolitan Council passed an environmental plan in 2009 stating that there was no space for a third bridge on the Bosphorus, the central government, which is run by the same party, initiated the construction of a third Bosphorus bridge. Additionally, the relevant plans and projects are being conducted not by the municipal government but by the Ministry of Transportation.

The central government, and specifically the Ministry of Interior Affairs, closely monitors the structure and quality of the services in municipal governments, through the action of its own local agencies and the power of administrative trusteeship (using as tools internal audits, external audits and audits by civil service inspectors). The Union of Municipalities of Turkey also offers training and technical support for the municipalities in this respect. There are also regional unions of municipalities which provide similar services to their members. Turkey is a signatory to the European Local Self-Government and Autonomy Charter, which obliges Turkey to fulfill some requirements. Additionally, the UNDP Support to Further Implementation of Local Administration Reform in Turkey project (LAR PHASE 2) is ongoing. It is hard to say that these standards are same everywhere, but they are improving gradually on an individual regional basis. Major issues in standardizing the public services at the local level are financial, technical and personnel-driven.
The huge disparities in the degree of development of the different regions were not addressed consistently in the period under investigation. Regarding physical infrastructure, to a significant degree outcome of the resources and performances of local governments, the ratio between the capital Ankara and the most underdeveloped region Muş in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of the country was 100 to 5.4. The weakest eight provinces are located in the mostly Kurdish (and Arabic) southeast, and the top 19 provinces are located in the northwest, including Ankara (and, as the only geographical exception, the tourist center Antalya).

Almost all public entities have a unit for EU affairs. As expressed earlier, strategic planning units are included in all ministries. Some pilot studies have been conducted in the public administration, including municipal governments, under the supervision of the Department of Strategic Planning of the State Planning Organization. Transparency and accountability are part of the administrative culture, at least conceptually.
Several general and specific projects have been developed between Turkey and the European Union, aimed at increasing human resources capacity and harmonizing legislation with the acquis. The UNDP (LAR 2), the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) and the Matra Pre-accession Projects Program, which address primary and secondary legislation, public administrative reform, education, justice and home affairs, health, environment, public works and more are major mechanisms aimed at adapting central and local governmental structures to supranational developments.
With respect to judicial reform, the government has created the new Higher Council of Judges and Prosecutors, modeling it on similar institutions in Italy, France, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.
Due to the unresolved Cyprus problem, France’s opposition to Turkey’s full EU membership, and domestic resistance to reforms, Turkey process toward EU membership slowed in the period under review. However, membership negotiations are continuing, allowing reforms to be grounded in the framework of the aquis communautarie of the European Union. The following chapters of negotiation have been opened: science and research, company law, copyright and related rights, environment, statistics, trans-European networks, enterprise and industry policy, consumer and health protection, financial control, information society and media, taxation and free movement of capital.

Since October 2008, Turkey has been one of the 10 nonpermanent members of the UN Security Council. Turkey started to solicit support for its election immediately after the election of the first AKP government in late 2002. In the period under review and the years prior to it, Turkey diplomatically reached out to hitherto neglected regions such as the Caribbean Community, the sub-Saharan states and Latin America. It thus established for the first time relations with the least developed countries and emerged as a donor within the frame of the United Nations.
Turkey continued its participation in peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo, and as of the time of writing was also engaged in Lebanon, contributing to infrastructure construction.
In addition, Turkey has enhanced its efforts to develop regional cooperation, applying an EU-style neighborhood policy focused initially on economic cooperation, which underlines cultural proximity and draws on the idea of a common identity.
In the process of EU candidacy, there has been some legislative progress with respect to public administration reform. A reform monitoring group convened in April 2010. The government has put great effort into collaborating with international actors, mainly the EU Commission, the OECD and the World Bank, toward further administrative reforms such as the Framework Law on Public Administration, the Law on Civil Servants, the Laws on Associations and Foundations and so on, and has even taken initiative in extending reform to other countries.

In addition to formal and regular inspection of ministerial activities, the Office of the President of the Republic has a State Supervisory Council to monitor the practice of state institutions. The prime minister’s office has also a High Supervisory Council of State and inspectors to fulfill such duties. Interministerial committees also may assess institutional arrangements. In preparing development plans or strategic plans, sectoral subcommittees prepare reports on the effectiveness and efficiency of governing. The Directorate General of Legislation Development and Publication and the Directorate General of Laws and Resolutions regularly deal with the harmonization and simplification of Turkish legislation.
In the period under review here, possibly for the first time, the monitoring activities of the State Supervisory Council were not triggered primarily by suspicions of irregularities, but were rather focused on the suitability and efficiency of the monitored institutions. The PMO’s High Supervisory Council still acted generally upon suspicions or claims of irregularity.

Changing institutional arrangements may be an easy task in theory, but is hard to put into practice in the short term. Maximizing strategic capacity requires a full inventory of resources, expert knowledge, an adequate budget and a participatory approach. Taking a strategic approach can also seem time-consuming for countries like Turkey, in which needs are big and urgent and resources are limited. Under these circumstances, one cannot practice a strategic approach, but can respond only to urgent demand. However, there is good will and effort to develop strategic capacity in the public administration in the long run. It is expected that full implementation of Law No. 5018 on Public Financial Management and Control may provide a sufficient channel to promote strategic capacity in the public administration. As outlined above (see Strategic Capacity), the government lacks sufficient personnel to meet the requirements of strategic planning, performance-based programs and activity reports. In this respect, several training and internship programs have been put in place.
However, in early 2010, the government majority in parliament passed a comprehensive constitutional amendment, focusing on reform of the high judiciary whose rulings have hampered government policy implementation and seriously limited parliamentary action. At the core of the amendments are changes to the staffing of the Constitutional Court and the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors. The amendments were adopted with 330 votes out of the 550 members of the Grand National Assembly, and the whole package was approved with a 58% vote in a public referendum on September 12, 2010 .

In general, the government does not do a good job of informing citizens about the content and development of its policies. In his monthly TV appearance, the prime minister touches on government success stories, but is not accountable to the public in the matters where the government fails. Government officials always highlight policies as promising objectives, but do not provide follow-up announcements. There is no survey on how citizens gain their information on government policy, but it is evident that the policy-making process is not transparent, participatory or interactive. The public learns of many policies only after the implementation process has started. The level of public knowledge about government is low, as is the level of satisfaction, but people do not complain about this. This is a major deficiency of the policy-making process in Turkey and is the result of the non-participatory nature of the policy-making process. Surveys basically measure respondents’ opinions on the government’s policies for or against, but never attempt to test whether the people in fact have sufficient information as to the policy content. Recent polls on the referendum process discovered that many respondents did not know what a referendum was, or what was being voted on in the referendum. This can be explained in part by the indifference of the public. However, the government has considerable room to enhance participatory policy-making methods, at least at the level of need assessment and the public evaluation of alternative policies.

According to Article 41 of the parliamentary rules of procedure, parliamentary committees or commissions may ask the ministries to provide any information relevant to their duty. However, one of the parliamentary inquiry committees on unsolved murders was recently unable to collect information from the security forces. Some invited public officials, mainly military officers, did not attend the special inquiry commission’s meetings.
It is still impossible for lawmakers to obtain reliable information related to the so-called National Security Policy Document, also known as the “secret constitution” or Red Book, which is drafted in secret consultations between the government and the armed forces.

According to Articles 30 of the parliamentary rules of procedure, the prime minister or ministers can attend committee meetings as the representative of the government without invitation, and may talk on the subject matter at hand. However, the prime minister or minister may also delegate a senior civil servant to be his or her representative at the committee meeting. Moreover, all parliamentarians and members of the Council of Ministers can attend and participate in committee meetings but have no right to submit a motion of amendment or to vote on the subject matter. If relevant, of course, the committee may ask a minister to explain a government position, but he or she is not required to comply with this invitation if there is no legal obligation.
In sum, parliamentary committees are not able to summon ministers for hearings, but the minister in charge of the competence area of a given committee may voluntarily decide to participate in a meeting. Normally, the committees are briefed by high-ranking ministerial bureaucrats. Committees rarely if ever invite ministers other than those dealing with their specific area of policy.

According to Article 30 of the parliamentary rules of procedure, committees are able to summon experts from NGOs, universities or the bureaucracy to provide testimony. There is no limitation to the exercise of this right. The committees have funds at their disposal to employ experts, but the status of these experts is not legally defined and there are no permanently employed experts.

According to Article 20 of the parliamentary rules of procedure, 12 out of 19 standing parliamentary committees are designed in parallel to the ministerial structures. However, they do not provide effective independent monitoring of the ministries. The primary function of the committees is to examine the draft bills. In the process of discussions, committees may also supervise the activities of the ministries indirectly.

The Court of Accounts reports to the parliament, but is not accountable to it. The parliament elects the court’s president and members from a list of candidates compiled by the parliament’s Plan and Budget Commission. However, the court rapporteurs and the prosecutors are appointed by the Cabinet of Ministers. After its competences were enhanced, the Court of Accounts reported serious inconsistencies in 2006 and 2007, but has no independent power to intervene. According to Paragraph 38 of the Law for the Court of Accounts, the court also oversees “military personnel, equipment and premises,” but the means of this oversight is specified through an ordinance issued under the joint responsibility of the ministries of Defense and Finance. According to experts, even this limited oversight is often impossible, because the military does not grant access to the court’s inspectors.
According to Article 160 of the constitution, the Court of Accounts is charged with auditing, on behalf of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, all accounts related to revenues, expenditures and properties of government departments financed by general and subsidiary budgets. There is a parliamentary Final Accounts Committee which reviews its own accounts annually.

There is no ombuds office in the parliament, but a parliamentary petition committee reviews citizens’ petitions and refers them to the relevant authority, if applicable. Moreover, the Human Rights Investigation Commission has the capacity to receive, investigate and review complaints on issues of human rights. The Commission on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men is entitled to review complaints about the violation of gender equality, and refers them to the relevant authority if applicable.
In the period under review, the parliament’s Petition Committee and the Human Rights Committee continued to accept citizen complaints. The Human Rights Commission in particular turned out to be very active in urging the administration to look for and enact remedies.
In 2006, the parliament passed a law to establish an ombudsman office. The law was returned to parliament by the president, who later applied to the Constitutional Court for its abolishment. In April 2009, the court declared the law to be unconstitutional because the new institution would not fit into the existing constitutionally protected administrative structure, and would violate the principle of separation of powers. Approximately four years after the law’s initial passage, the establishment of an ombudsman office was included in the package of amendments to the constitution. This amendment was subject both to a new review by the Constitutional Court and a referendum held in September 2010.

There are huge differences between the various private and state-run TV channels with respect to coverage of government policy and politics. Whereas infotainment clearly overshadows analytical reporting on most private channels with high audience ratings, the state-run TRT (Turkish Radio and Television) has developed a number of news formats, including political talk shows, foreign policy reporting, and political and historical documentaries, which collectively provide politically balanced and comprehensive information.
However, very few radio or TV broadcasts offer in-depth analysis of government policies and their effects. This is basically due to the government control of the state-run stations, and the ratings objectives of the private channels. Providing in-depth political analyses may result in a private media organization being included on the government’s blacklist.
The third TRT channel broadcasts parliamentary debates live, and special programs regularly discuss the relationship of Turkey with the European Union as well as the reforms associated with Turkey’s EU accession process. In the period under review, TRT also introduced a special Kurdish language channel. TRT has overcome its former constraints in terms of subjects and approaches, which had been imposed by state ideology. Public TV has started to provide more in-depth programs, which rely mainly on invited experts’ comments. However, in some cases this may have the effect of providing disinformation. The state-run TRT broadcasting service does not provide a pluralism of opinions, and always takes a pro-government stance.

With respect to issues of the economy, education, reform of the state organization and administration, and sustainability of the social security system, the governing party’s program and policies have been relatively coherent and – at least given the current environment – relatively successful. The government’s weak performance in other policy areas, particularly environmental protection and labor rights, is due to the low priority given to these issues.
A cartelization of the party system and centripetal attitudes among the public have encouraged catch-all tendencies among the political parties. Global trends have also led the mainstream political parties to adopt popular ideas such as privatization, minimal state, lifting of protectionist barriers, and other such concepts. Therefore political parties have developed similar economic, foreign policy and social policy proposals. People vote for leaders rather than programs.
For example, the economic programs of the two major opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) do not go beyond repeating commonplaces, according to economists and entrepreneurs. Neither of the two parties offer a coherent vision of how to come to terms with the country’s most serious problem, that of the Kurdish conflict that has left 40,000 people dead in the last 28 years. Neither the RPP nor the NMP grapples with the fact that Turks and Kurds for the first time in the history of the Turkish Republic are developing strong resentment against each other. Neither of the two major opposition parties offers a clear-cut concept for foreign or EU policy, or deals with the influence of the military and of militarism upon Turkey’s political life.
The incumbent government differs positively from the main opposition parties, namely the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), in terms of the space provided for good governance and democracy and human rights during the last two elections.

Although they do not always argue for the same economic policies, both the Istanbul-centered Turkish Industrialists’ and Entrepreneurs’ Association (TÜSİAD) and the Anatolian-centered Independent Industrialists’ and Entrepreneurs’ Association (MÜSİAD) pursue reasonable policies. Both associations advocate not only for privatization, development of the market economy and the integration of Turkey into the world economy, but also for liberal reforms, human rights, democratization, reform of the Turkish ethnic-nationalist concept of citizenship, and the establishment of the rule of law. From time to time, these groups issue reports, proposals and positions on certain issues such as education, health, security and constitutional reform, but a few organizations are responsible for the majority of such opinions. It is also questionable to what extent the government considers these reports.
When it comes to social and labor rights, both organizations appear to be more skeptical, but they do not oppose unionism as such. It is of particular interest that TÜSİAD, which had always been close to the secularist state elite and the state ideology, today also takes the cultural rights of the more conservative majority of the population into account. It has managed, for the first time, to establish dialogue and cooperation with MÜSİAD, which is regarded as the mouthpiece of the more religiously conservative entrepreneurs of Anatolia.
Among the labor unions, the ideological split between secularist unions like KESK and DİSK and the more Muslim conservative Hak-İş still tends to prevent common action, leading to a waste of energy that might better be spent in advocacy of the social and economic rights of the working class. Additionally, Turkish unions tend to concentrate on symbolic struggles such as the fight for the right to demonstrate at a particular square in Istanbul on May 1, instead of for social and economic policies holding the potential for direct benefit to their members.

Interest associations may communicate with the government through various channels, but have little effect on the final outcome of governmental work. There are several initiatives aimed at enhancing the capacity of civil society in Turkey, yet due to financial and human resources constraints, only a few leading, semi-professional associations provide feasible policy proposals on social issues. Recently, several civil initiatives have been established with the aim of promoting further democratization. However, these seem to be primarily advocacy groups, and their long-term competence and consistency has yet to be demonstrated.
Environmentalist groups oppose large irrigation projects at the Black Sea coast, in the East Anatolian region of Tunceli and around the ancient town Hasankeyf in southeastern Anatolia. In the case of Hasankeyf, the resistance is motivated additionally by nationalist Kurdish attitudes, but by and large, environmentalist groups base their policy on sound data and propose reasonable alternatives.
Other issues questioned by environmentalists include nuclear power plant projects and urban development plans. In these cases too, environmentalist groups adopt comprehensive approaches.
Among religious interest groups, the Muslim Alevi minority appears to be the most outspoken opposition movement. The Alevi bring forward justified complaints, citing issues such as discrimination in the fields of religious education, clergy training and public funding. Policy proposals made by some of the most powerful Alevi groups, however, simply demand exceptional rules and privileges for their own community. These groups do not take into account the limitations that authoritarian secularism poses on the religious freedom of the Sunni Muslim majority, and thus do not really contribute to the establishment of liberal secularism.