Analyzing the change of petroleum policy in Turkey

This study examines Turkey's oil policy in terms of the phenomena of public policy change. In this perspective, an approach has been chosen that centers the state as the unit of analysis while bringing economic, political, and social processes into the discussion in the background. An analysis has been conducted within the framework of the thesis that Turkey's oil policy has had an incremental character in terms of change since the proclamation of the Republic. The perception of change in the field of public policy is explored. The phenomenon of change in the discipline has been understood to be based on incrementalism, but theories such as the Punctuated Equilibrium and Advocacy Coalition Framework have been critically developed in the literature, and the approaches developed by these theories in terms of change have been emphasized. While examining Turkey's oil policy in the context of public policy change, the goal was to investigate the incremental spirit within the framework of the main thesis, and the periods that were discovered to be outside of the incremental approach were evaluated within the frameworks of the Punctuated Equilibrium and Advocacy Coalition Theories. In general, it has been understood that there are three periods of change. Following the period of statism and anti-foreign capital policymaking, the first period of change began in 1954 with the formation of new institutions in politics, economic liberalism, and pro-foreign capital policymaking. The second era of change was the 1973 Reform Law period, which was greatly affected by the National Petroleum Cause as an advocacy coalition and the establishment of a policy centered on "re-statism," anti-foreign capital, and public interest in oil policy. The third change, which emerged under the influence of neoliberalism and was reflected by privatizations in oil policy, and which may be somewhat analyzed within the framework of the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory but whose results were incremental, was experienced between 2000 and 2008. In all this historical narrative, it has been seen that there is a constant choice between the first line of thought, which was shaped in the founding period on the ideas of statism, anti-foreign capital, and public interest, and the second line of thought, which was formed during the Punctuated Period on the ideas of economic liberalism and proforeign capital; thus, it has been concluded that the incremental character of policy change can be followed in