This essay explores the rise and decline of regulatory independence in Turkey. Framing the ongoing process of limiting independence of these agencies as the politics of de‐delegation, it raises the question of why Turkish regulatory agencies have become subject to increasing political intervention. Contending that institutional legacies and mounting illiberal predispositions of the Turkish state facilitate the politics of de‐delegation, the essay focuses on centralization, executive discretion, and politicization of bureaucracy as the major institutional legacies. Then it briefly discusses formal and informal mechanisms of political intervention, which have impaired the independence of the regulatory agencies.

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Following decades-long inertia, many countries started reforming vocational education and training (VET). Yet, respective reform processes that entail certain traits of the German dual system face challenges linked to domestic constraints. Focusing on secondary education and drawing on the Turkish case, this article examines VET’s transformation from a centralized, school-based, state-dominated system to a system based on school–industry collaboration. It suggests that effective adoption of VET reforms may be facilitated by bipartite coordination between government and employers’ organizations representing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It unveils how such coordination led an institutional transformation, fostered by a broad cross-class VET coalition formed in a polarized fashion. Highlighting the role of political ownership and organizational capacity in VET reforms, it traces how the Justice and Development Party (AKP) accommodated SMEs’ demands, while sidelining labor. The article undertakes a power-distributional analysis tackling political conflicts and coalitions as drivers of institutional change and continuity.