ABSTRACT
In the Ottoman-Turkish political evolution (from 1299 to the present) both government and civil bureaucracy went through signifi cant changes. An early classifi cation among the political institutions of the Ottoman Empire was that by Lybyer (1913), which distinguished the “Ruling Institution” from the “Moslem Institution”: the former was made up of the sultan and his household, the civil bureaucracy, and the military; the latter consisted of the religious bureaucracy. Th e “executive” and “administrative” functions were carried out, at least during the earlier centuries, by the civil and religious bureaucracies, respectively (İnalcık, 1954). According to another classifi cation (Karpat, 1968, p. 72), the latter together formed the “men of pen,” who were distinguished from the “men of sword,” or the military. In the Republican Turkey (1923 to the present), the “general
civil service” comprised offi cials and employees of the central government, including judges, foreign service personnel, teachers and professors in public schools and universities, and the administrative and clerical staff of the ministries (Kingsbury and Aktan, 1955, p. 22).
