Patronage marginalizes qualified Turkish diplomats
Increase of unqualified personnel and self-serving political appointees has harmed Ankara’s ability to conduct international affairs, experts say.
Once considered the cream of the bureaucracy, Turkey's foreign ministry is in decline as it becomes marginalized in policy-making and turns into an outlet for government loyalists waiting to be rewarded.
This is not just the view of the opposition but also of former ambassadors who have served in some of Turkey’s most important posts abroad.
As a multilingual class of highly educated officials, who were expected to hold their own in any part of the world, diplomats had a unique position in the state apparatus in former days.
This has changed fundamentally under the Justice and Development Party (AKP); especially after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ushered in his system of one-man rule following the elections in June 2018.
