Think tanks in the formation of public policies: SETA in the process of transition to the Presidential Government System

As a result of the transformation of the modernizing world, the problems are no longer only of economic, political or military origin; relationships, problems and conflicts have become intertwined and complex. The number of internal and external factors to be considered has gone beyond the limits of controllability. As a solution to the difficulties that arise, new information is produced with increasing momentum, existing information is developed, and transformed into new and other forms. In the information age, those who have the will to make decisions can access the information they need in a few seconds at any time and in any place through the Internet. However, they are struggling to reach a conclusion among the heaps of information that are as complex, unsystematic, contradictory, unreliable, and often difficult to understand due to technical terms and phrases, as well as the problems for which a solution is sought. In addition, an artificial reality can be presented to guide decision makers by selecting the desired ones from information pollution and raw information by some interest groups. In an information society characterized by excessive information overload and 'post-truth politics', one of the institutions that helps policymakers distinguish the reliability and usefulness of analytical products from different ones is think tanks. However, one of the most important problems related to think tanks is the problem of determining the effects of these organizations and the degree of this effect. It is unlikely to be able to certify that the work of a think tank in any country and the implementation of a policy adopted by governments coincide one-on-one. For these reasons, it is very difficult to measure the success of think tanks in influencing policies, and there are also many methodological difficulties with this problem. Instead, the success of think tanks in the roles and functions they perform and what kind of tool they are used as in the policy-making process are investigated. Therefore, in this study, the functions, roles and activities of think tanks in Turkey in the process of creating public policies have been tried to be revealed through an example. For this purpose, during the transition to the Presidential Government System, the activities carried out by the SETA think tank related to this incident were examined by the method of document analysis. In accordance with the obtained data, the roles and functions performed by SETA in the process of transition to the Presidential Government System have been determined. Thus, the effectiveness of SETA in the referendum process of the Presidential Government System has been revealed, and from here, within the framework of the induction logic, the capacities of think tanks in Turkey in the process of creating public policies have been interpreted.