I'll try to answer your question, sorry if it doesn't satisfy you. Now, both the "Ottoman Empire" and "Society" is way too broad, so i'll restrict it to "16th century Ottoman Empire" and "Ottoman bureaucracy/institutions". With that said, the answer is yes, but actually no

Although the Ottoman Empire is often described as a meritocracy, it remained an essentially patrimonial system until the reforms of the Tanzimat in the 19th century. Besides merit and career service, family ties, clientship, and loyalty to the sultan were instrumental in obtaining and holding the highest offices of the state. This was further complicated by the fact that all high executives of the empire, including the grand vizier, were the sultan’s kuls or slaves and their position was precarious, subject to the sovereign’s will, power politics, and factionalism.

The administration of the Ottoman Empire in its classical period was based on a system of educating the originally Christian kul in the imperial palace with the aim of appointing them to military and administrative positions. The logic of this system was to secure their absolute loyalty to the Ottoman dynasty by erasing their religious and familial affiliations (though often this was not really the case). By 1550, the ruling elites of the Ottomans were by and large the product of the kul system, which meant that the sultans appointed the members of state apparatus among the kuls trained in the palace. In the workings of the system, the system of merit was established and continued throughout one's career. In the central and provincial system, those who did well were rewarded with better positions and opportunities for wealth and status. But especially in the palace, intisab (patronage or personal relations) helped tremendously to get oneself noticed and appointed. Meritocracy and professionalization coexisted in apparent contradiction with the reality of personal relations and patronage, which concerned the influence of individuals other than the sultan in appointments and career advancement. This was further increased by the reality of limited sultanic authority in the late 16th century. I'll give you an example on how this worked

Doğancı Kara Mehmed Pasha

Mehmed Pasha was Armenian by origin, born around the middle of the sixteenth century in Kayseri in central Anatolia. Unlike most kuls, he was not a devşirme recruit raised and educated in the enderûn (palace school). He was a servant of Beşoğlu Kaya Bey, one of the district governors of Maraş province and a renowned hawker. From his master, Mehmed learned the art of hunting with birds of prey, above all hawks, hence his nickname doğancı. Kaya Bey sent young Mehmed as a gift to the newly enthroned Selim II, hoping to curry favour. Sultan Selim in turn presented him to his eldest son Murad, then serving as governor of Manisa, because he knew that Murad was a passionate hunter. In Manisa, Mehmed became Prince Murad’s favourite hunting companion, acquiring the nickname kara (strong). Mehmed was also a charming person, renowned for his sweet talk and that he always knew how to entertain Murad.

Following his accession in 1574, Murad III appointed Kara Mehmed as doğancıbaşı (chief hawker), thus including him among the highest-ranking officials of his inner court service. He worked in a building between the Privy Chamber and the Chamber of Petitions, where he trained and took care of the sultan’s most precious hawks alongside some twenty hawkers under his command. During royal hunts, he was the sultan’s closest companion and responsible for presenting the quarry to him. For five years, Kara Mehmed held this important office which enabled him to further cement his personal bond with his master. Meanwhile, thanks to his combination of official and non-official duties, he not only established himself as an important member of Murad III’s personal household but also enjoyed what would prove to be far-reaching relationships with several prominent court figures of the time, most crucially with the members of the Anti-Sokollu (the grand vizier at the time) faction like Bosnavî (Bosnian) İbrahim Agha, the sword-bearer which considered him as his apprentice. On October 9, 1583, after having briefly served as mîrâhûr (master of the royal stables), Kara Mehmed was promoted to agha of the Janissaries, a post which had been a gateway for the sultan’s kuls to the highest ranks in the military-administrative hierarchy. As a special mark of his favour, Murad III married him to a concubine from his harem. The sultan even allowed him to recruit certain family members and bring them to Istanbul, where they were employed in the inner palace service. In October 1584, Kara Mehmed reached the zenith of his career. Early that month, he petitioned Murad to make him governor-general of Rumeli and replace him as agha of the Janissaries with one of his own proteges from the privy chamber, Bosnavî Halil Agha, Murad III’s sword-bearer after İbrahim. Only two weeks later, this time with the backing of Damad İbrahim Pasha, Kara Mehmed was officially appointed a court favourite, with extraordinary privileges that bypassed all the established court hierarchy and imperial bureaucracy. For instance, he not only enjoyed the privilege of submitting petitions to and seeing the sultan in person on a regular basis, he was also assigned to supervise the preparations for Grand Vizier Özdemiroğlu Osman Pasha’s campaign of 1584-85 in the Caucasus and the distribution of three-month salaries to the palace soldiers, two important tasks which had traditionally been carried out by the grand vizier and his office. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, he oversaw the first significant devaluation of the Ottoman akçe, which was necessitated by a severe monetary crisis in the mid-1580s. Thus, from 1584 until his murder in 1589, Doğancı Mehmed Pasha was Murad III’s most trusted associate and chief power-broker, if not his face, in running court affairs. Moreover, like all chief favourites, he began to accumulate great wealth, thanks to Sultan Murad, who kept showering him with royal gifts, most noticeably by granting him large landholdings as private property. Besides creating a large network of clients, Mehmed Pasha used his wealth to patronize the arts and literature, modelling himself on the sultan, who was a renowned poet and man of letters himself.

Source:

Bandits and Bureaucrats, The Ottoman Route to State Centralization by Karen Barkey

On the Power, Political Career and Patronage Networks of the Ottoman Royal Favourites by Günhan Börekçi