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Lecture

Populism and foreign policy institutions in Turkey

Politicisation, hyperpersonalisation and individualisation

Add to calendar 2025-11-27 14:30 2025-11-27 16:00 Europe/Rome Populism and foreign policy institutions in Turkey Sala Belvedere Villa Schifanoia YYYY-MM-DD
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Scheduled dates

Nov 27 2025

14:30 - 16:00 CET

Sala Belvedere, Villa Schifanoia

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Join this discussion on how the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (TMFA) has been reshaped to serve President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, leading to increased populism and loyalty-based appointments, the centralisation of foreign policymaking under the presidency, and a decline in the TMFA’s bureaucratic autonomy.
The article presented in this lecture investigates the transformation of Turkey’s foreign policy institutions under the leadership of the AKP and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, focusing on processes of politicisation, hyperpersonalisation, and individualisation. The study first analyses how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (TMFA) has been reshaped to serve the ideological and strategic imperatives of a populist regime, particularly after the establishment of the executive presidential system in 2018, through politicisation. It then shows a significant decline in bureaucratic autonomy and meritocratic norms within the TMFA, accompanied by the rise of loyalty-based appointments and the centralisation of foreign policymaking under the presidency. This section also discusses the growing influence of security institutions, such as the secret service, in Turkish foreign policy-making, a process referred to here as hyperpersonalisation. Finally, the article argues that populist transformation occurs both at institutional and individual levels: micro-level practices such as immediacy, responsiveness, and accessibility function as techniques of populist governance, including the symbolic use of martyrs’ cemeteries to reinforce ideological reproduction abroad. The narrative of martyrdom and the symbolic expansion of Turkey’s diplomatic presence, primarily through new embassies tied to historical memory, reinforce the populist redefinition of diplomacy. Turkish foreign policy under the AKP illustrates how populist regimes dismantle institutional foreign services and replace them with a personalised, centralised, symbolically charged, and security-oriented model of diplomacy.

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