The Turkish state’s responses to existential COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

This article focuses on how the Turkish state has been responding to limit the public health effects of COVID-19 pandemic to date. It aims to explain and understand the introduction, implementation and effect of health policy instrument mixes. It argues that although 'presidentialisation' of executive, and 'presidential bureaucracy' under presidential system of government are critical to introduce policies and implement their instrument mixes without delay or being vetoed or watered down which would otherwise occur in the parliamentary system of government, these features of impositional and exclusive policy style pose risks of policy design and implementation failures when the policy problems are poorly diagnosed, their policy solutions are wrong and/or complementary policy instrument mixes implemented ineffectively. However, a temporal, albeit temporary divergence from a dominant administrative tradition and policy style is most likely when a policy issue is esoteric (i.e. technical, scientific and expert-led) and framed as an existential crisis under high uncertainty that require scientific, expert-led, inclusive, early, quick and decisive responses to pressing policy problems.

Multistakeholder Participation in Disaster Management—The Case of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…They used rapid and strong response, extensive use of institutional resources and factual information campaigns as their crisis management. They partnered with government, community and the religious leaders [ 74 , 75 , 76 ]. Canada used social distancing, travel restrictions, integration of social sciences as their method.…”

Claiming credit and avoiding blame: political accountability in Greek and Turkish responses to the COVID‐19 crisis

“…Despite democratic credentials, authoritarian tendencies explain why the Turkish leadership fell short when it came to transparency and public opinion support. As underlined by Bakir (2020), while presidentialisation of the executive branch and strong bureaucratic loyalty have been instrumental in the country's swift and decisive responses to the pandemic, they also create permissive ground for policy design and implementation failures due to the limited discretionary power of the state bureaucracy and limited participation of societal actors in policy design.…”

Crisis management in authoritarian regimes: A comparative study of COVID-19 responses in Turkey and Iran

“…Turkey has also been frequently cited as having one of the fastest rising infection rates worldwide, with many analysts linking this situation to the country's increased testing capacity (Balta & Özel, 2020). Indeed, Turkey had a higher number of confirmed coronavirus cases 13 days after the reporting of the 100th case, compared to China, Italy or Spain (Bakir, 2020).…”

“…The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Turkey had surpassed Iran by April 18, the second hotbed of the coronavirus outbreak, reporting the highest number of cases in the Middle East ("Turkey's Coronavirus Cases Overtake Iran", 2020). Yet, despite a high number of reported cases and a fast infection spread rate, Turkey's death toll remained low compared to other countries affected by the coronavirus outbreak during the first months of the pandemic (Bakir, 2020;Cagaptay & Yuksel, 2020;Guerin, 2020; "What Turkey Got Right", 2020). Turkey, however, seems to have lagged behind in responding to the pandemic compared to its relative success in the earlier phase of the outbreak.…”

“…The timing of the preventive measures is crucial in the crisis response. In this sense, Turkey was among the first countries to suspend flights to and from China on February 3 (Bakir, 2020;Balta & Özel, 2020). Turkey also closed its border with Iran and cancelled all land, air, and railway travel from the country on February 23 (Bakir, 2020).…”