Abstract This paper, using examples from Turkish foreign policy between 2002 and 2014, argues that the fragmentation in foreign policymaking due to adopting different foreign policy ideas, that is, ideas of the elected leadership and the bureaucracy, is likely to generate competition between the state agencies that constitute the foreign policy bureaucracy. If there is backlash in the bureaucracy to realize the government's revisionist foreign policy goals, then the government aims to transform the bureaucracy by empowering certain small bureaucratic units, that is, missionary agencies. Once the degree of conflict between the government and the bureaucracy becomes severe, then the elected officials opt to work with the established bureaucratic agencies to speed up the decision-making processes. The analysis based on a series of interviews conducted with sixty-one Turkish foreign policymakers shows that the turf war in the foreign policy bureaucracy is a conceptual framework for comprehending how elected officials use bureaucratic tactics to undermine the involvement of bureaucrats in decision-making processes. Finally, the study contributes to current debates on populism and the presidentialization of foreign policy by showing that the foreign policy bureaucracy is not immune from the anti-elite, anti-establishment rhetoric of governments.