This profession, which can have the title of strategist, analyst, political analyst, foreign policy expert, foreign policy researcher, think tank expert or think tanker, is not regarded a full-time profession. It is a profession that has not evolved into a career, which is not defined and which does not have a unique name. Time spent at think tanks is regarded as time wasted. For full-time strategists, time spent at think tanks is destined to fade away like writing on the surface of a lake. It is known as a full-time job for retired high-ranking bureaucrats and postgraduate students and as a part-time job for academics.Those who complete their doctoral theses while working at Turkish think tanks tend to move on to work as lecturers at universities. Since working as an academic gives one a good career-track job, is easier to do and provides shelter against fears of unemployment, young strategists opt to shift toward the academic world after completing their doctorate. On the other hand, movement from the academic world to think tanks is generally toward executive positions. Still, these movements generally occur for a temporary period of time -- for several years at most. Movements from the civilian or military bureaucracy are generally seen in the form of resignations from previous jobs. High-ranking retired civilian or military bureaucrats tend to consider think tanks simply a good alternative to staying at home and as a potential means of entry into active politics. Furthermore, there are analysts in pajamas who stay at home and write amateurish articles as strategists in their retirement.
The biggest challenge for think tanks in Turkey is attracting well-educated experts (aged between 25 and 55) for an extended period of employment. For think tanks to have a bright future, they should be able to offer long-term contracts and long-term employment guarantees to strategists who can turn think tanks into career centers and ensure mobility. In the 1950s, Sait Faik Abasıyanık applied to the police department to obtain a passport. He wrote "author" in the profession box on the application form, but the police officer in charge told him that there was no profession defined as "author." So he had to change it to "unemployed." Until the 1950s, being an author was not considered a profession, and 50 years later, now, being a strategist, which is a profession of intellectuals, is not regarded as a profession. Being a strategist must be made into a profession that is formally recognized by the general public and the public and private sectors.
In Western countries, think tanks and strategists are part of the system. Think tanks are the workshops where policies are tailored. Their clients are the decision makers. For this reason, there is a high rate of mobility between think tanks and the public sector, the media, universities, the private sector and politics in the West, particularly in the US. However, in Turkey, think tanks are not part of the system although they are close to decision makers. The rate of mobility between think tanks and the public and private sectors is very low. The only sizable mobility exists with the academic world and the media.
In the West, particularly in the US, the public and private sectors have the tradition of assigning projects to think tanks. In Turkey, on the contrary, the public and private sectors do not have such an institutionalized tradition. Moreover, in Turkey, plagiarism is comparatively widespread and considered normal, which makes the survival of think tanks very hard.
Turkish think tanks are further handicapped by the challenges of securing reliable financing, recruiting a permanent staff, ensuring harmony among the staff, using time in an efficient manner and obtaining up-to-date information. In Turkey, strategists have mobility with universities while their mobility with bureaucracy and politics is limited. The existing system in the public and private sectors and in universities is miles away from properly supporting think tanks and encouraging young people to specialize in foreign policy areas. Turkish think tanks are not able to utilize the public sector's sources of information in the public domain. In Turkey, the public sector has a monopoly over crude information in the foreign policy and security fields. There is virtually no public organization from which one can obtain information concerning foreign policy matters. In regions of interest, Turkish think tank officers open offices. The realities of these regions, maybe even the languages spoken ,are not fully known.
In Turkey, the rate of turnover of employment is very high at nongovernmental organizations and think tanks. This leads to a weaker corporate identity.
