Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it will no longer admit officers to the ministry based on their State Personnel Examination (KPSS) scores, but based on results of another exam that will be held by the ministry.
According to the regulation on appointing public officers, which is published in the Official Gazette on Saturday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs will hold an exam different from KPSS to select diplomats and officers to be appointed to the ministry.
A similar regulation was made into law in 2014, enabling Turkey’s Ministry of Interior to select district governors with its own exam and not the KPSS.
A secret meeting held by senior Justice and Development Party (AK Party) figures after June 7 parliamentary elections recently published by Nokta magazine. Speaking during the meeting, İstanbul deputy Ali Sarıkaya — who also served as the chief adviser to former-Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu – states that pro-government association members could not score high enough to be appointed as officers to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“There are not any young [AK Party] organization members [holding important positions] in the media, universities or dormitories. This is not an issue that we can solve within two months. When I was in the Foreign Affairs Ministry, I used to let 100 associations know that we would be hiring new officers. [However], they could not even give me 5 names in total. Those people whose names were given either had low scores [on KPSS] or were missing a language exam score. … We have no noteworthy projects towards the youth,” Sarıkaya reportedly said during the meeting.