The Sociology of Diplomats and Foreign Policy Sector: The Role of Cliques on the Policy-Making Process
| Published date | 01 November 2021 |
| Date | 01 November 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920901954 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920901954
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(4) 558 –573
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920901954
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The Sociology of Diplomats and
Foreign Policy Sector: The Role
of Cliques on the Policy-Making
Process
Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm
Abstract
This paper studies the sociology of elites and the role of cliques on the foreign policy-making
process through an exploratory case study of Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It identifies elite
sociology as the independent variable triggering a policy-making process in the Turkish Ministry
for Foreign Affairs in line with organisational process or governmental politic approaches. It shows
that until the 1980s, the Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs was marked by strong hierarchical
tradition triggered by a certain career path and cliqueism leading to the homogeneity in the
sociology of elites. This in turn triggered a foreign policy-making process based on organisational
process. The role of cliqueism weakened along with the incremental circulation of elites in the
post-1980s and particularly in the post-2005 period as the elite structure in the Turkish Ministry
for Foreign Affairs became even more heterogeneous, foreign policy-making process moved
towards governmental politics which allowed taking into account diverse schools of thought.
Nevertheless, newly emerging programmatic elites employed deliberate efforts for elite circulation
by altering the dominant career path and relying on political appointments. The resulting outcome
was the emergence of a new clique of ruling elites subordinate to political elites which led to the
politicisation of the foreign policy decision-making process in the post-2011 period.
Keywords
sociology of elites, elite circulation, diplomacy, foreign policy, organisational process,
governmental politics, Turkey
Accepted: 17 December 2019
Introduction
In a long-term process, Turkish foreign policy was generally reactive and ultimately it was
important to maintain the status quo. Attention has been focused on gathering information about
developments and reacting only when it is necessary rather than producing different choices and
choosing among them. As a result, creativity and tendency of shaping of incidents have been
compromised for the sake of certainty and clarity (Memoir 13: 227).
Department of Political Science and International Relations, Bahçeşehir University, İstanbul, Turkey
Corresponding author:
Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Bahçeşehir
University, Çırağan Caddesi, Osmanpaşa Mektebi Sokak, No: 4-6, Beşiktaş, İstanbul, Turkey.
Email: rahime.kurum@eas.bau.edu.tr
901954PSW0010.1177/1478929920901954Political Studies ReviewSüleymanoğlu-Kürüm
research-article2020
Article
Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm 559
This is how retired ambassador Yaman Başkut described the Turkish foreign policy-making
process in his memoir published in 2004. Nevertheless, literature on Turkish foreign policy
illustrates that this reactive character of Turkish foreign policy weakened in early 1980s and
mid-2000s as Turkey is defined as a new ‘soft power’ (Oğuzlu, 2007) with a clearly defined
goal change that spans the period to the uprisings in the Middle East (Cop and Zihnioğlu,
2017). While the theoretical approaches adopted to explain these changes incorporated the
EU integration process, and internal dynamics as potential independent variables, there has
been an exclusive reliance on rationalist approaches that treat Turkey as a single and cen-
trally administered entity which led to neglecting the critical role played by state bureau-
cracy since the eighteenth century of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish military was
presented as the sole bureaucratic actor pushing for a Western oriented foreign policy, and
the Turkish Ministry for Foreign Affairs’ (TMFA) bureaucracy is mentioned only in general
terms as a veto player blocking initiatives of political elites, that is, during Özal’s time, due
to its different view (see Kösebalaban, 2011: 12).
This paper is not a study of Turkish foreign policy but an exploratory case study of
Turkey to understand the impact of the sociology of elites (independent variable) on the
foreign policy-making process (dependent variable) in two periods: post-1980 and post-
2005. The paper responds to Khan’s (2012: 362) invitation to revive the ‘sociology of
elites’ as a field of study to understand how they control resources and convert them into
other forms of capital. The sociology of elites is measured by looking at the meritocracy,
political appointments and socio-economic background of bureaucrats. The outcomes are
inspired by organisational process and governmental politics models put forward by
Graham Allison in his important book ‘Essence of Decision: Explaining Cuban Missile
Crises’ (Allison, 1969, 1971). The former argues that foreign policy outcomes are outputs
of the organisations which perform their ‘routines’ and ‘standard operating procedures’
(Allison, 1971: 79; Nelson and Winter, 1982: 11–15) . The latter, meanwhile, sees actions
in foreign relations as outcomes of negotiations among players active in the national gov-
ernments and have different perceptions, motivations, powers and manoeuvres to increase
their bureaucratic powers (Allison and Zelikow, 1999; Meek, 2007: 350; Michael Clarke,
1989). It is assumed that non-diversity of social backgrounds among bureaucrats limits
the variety of viewpoints and leads the TMFA to take position according to its organisa-
tional routines. Hence, the TMFA remains a reactionary and status quo defending policy-
making actor. On the contrary, given Turkey’s economic development and expanded
university sector, the more heterogeneous TMFA establishment is expected to incorporate
diverse views and be more pro-active to allow Turkey appear as a soft power.
Data for this paper have been drawn from 17 published memoirs of retired diplomats
who served in the MFA since the 1940s and 12 semi-structured interviews with recently
retired diplomats, diplomatic wives, and former foreign ministers (see Appendix 1).
Memoirs are personal documents that give information on how diplomats experience dif-
ferent organisational norms and culture as well as patterns of behaviour in their work such
as interactions between diplomats of different ranks and elected politicians. However,
diplomats are allowed to write their memoirs only after their retirement. Therefore, there
are limited memoirs published for the period that covers post-2005. Therefore, these data
are supplemented with 12 interviews as well as published news stories.
Findings first illustrate that similar to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MFAs) all
around the world (i.e. UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office), TMFA was marked by
strong hierarchical tradition triggered by a career path through elite schools and universi-
ties. Both the recruitment and promotion of diplomats were tied to specific career path
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