A Blueprint of Turkey’s Covid-19 Policy

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Date
2020
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Abstract
In 2020 a new worldwide pandemic, which was named as Covid-19 started in Wuhan/China and affected deeply different regions rapidly. In the process, governments have devised various roadmaps and policies to combat the pandemic. To this end, various measures have been taken, and several restrictions have been imposed on citizens, especially curfews. Turkey has been one of the most affected countries in terms of the number of cases from the Covid-19 pandemic. The Turkish government and the citizens played a major role in keeping pandemic under control with their efforts and devotion. In this context, regulations have been made in many policy areas, especially health. New hospitals have been established, their work patterns have been changed, and Covid-19 focused preventive, and treatment studies have been carried out. Besides, economic support packages were announced, social arrangements were made, and education policies were changed. Also, personnel policies were reorganised, and new social policies were implemented. During this period, Turkey sent protective equipment, health equipment and health technologies to different countries free of charge under international aid. Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing campaigns that took place within the country have also been successful at both local and national levels. Turkey has performed successful process management in this process and has come forward as a best practice with its low spread and mortality rates during the epidemic. Therefore, the policy in Turkey needs to be scrutinised, to draw lessons for new cases. The foremost aim of this study is to analyse the policies made in the pandemic process in Turkey. In this context, responses and the initiatives of the official policy actors will be analysed. On the other hand, unofficial and international actors contributing to the pandemic process will be examined. Later on, the roles and effects of think tanks and street- level bureaucrats will be discussed. While analysing the Covid-19 policy Turkey, the decisions taken during the process will be handled within the framework of the decision-making approaches in the literature. Moreover, it is aimed to have a comprehensive policy analysis by given priority the concepts of policy transfer and lesson drawing. This study reveals that Turkey's policies regarding the pandemic process are based on some of the fundamental aspects such as coordination, public relations, usage of technology and task distribution.
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Covid-19 Pandemic, Public Policy Analysis, Policy Transfer, Street- Level Bureaucrats, Turkey
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