Reforms made in the Turkish public bureaucracy: E-government applications

The traditional bureaucracy administration approach, which has a deep-rooted history in Turkish history, began to be discussed in the 1980s and significant changes were observed in the understanding of public administration. Especially after 1980, with the influence of the new public management approach, bureaucracy was seriously questioned and as a result, many reforms were made in the public bureaucracy to increase the quality in favor of the citizens. The excess of bureaucratic procedures, which stand as an obstacle to efforts to increase the quality of public services and reduce bureaucratic procedures, causes both inefficient time wasting and financial losses. In this context, the e-Government, which was implemented in the Turkish bureaucracy in the sense of state administration in a short time based on information technologies, constitutes the main subject of this study. As a result of this application, citizens can benefit from many public services without going to public institutions, and time and financial losses can be prevented. Based on this, the study first tried to explain bureaucracy, reform and e-Government within the conceptual framework. The historical development of the Turkish bureaucracy and the reform studies carried out in the Turkish public bureaucracy in the Republican period are included, and the organizational and functional problems of the Turkish bureaucracy are discussed. Finally, the factors that led to the transition to e-Government application, which is the subject of the study, e-Government application examples and what kind of transformation this reform caused in the Turkish bureaucracy were examined and their responses in the public opinion were revealed. Keywords: Bureaucracy, Reform, Bureaucratic reforms, e-Government, Turkish Public Bureaucracy-Transformation in Bureaucracy.