Although these commitments are made as part of advancing the country's EU bid, Turkey's report card for fighting corruption and fraud is not good, despite relative improvements in recent years. With Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the deputy chairman of the Republican People's Party (CHP), accusing Şaban Dişli, the deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), of $1 million worth of corruption, Turkey has once again faced the bitter truth of the corrupt practices prevalent throughout the country.
Will a Turkey that promises the EU to amend 131 laws be able to completely rid itself of a social disease as ingrained as corruption? Experts say while it has recently made significant progress in this respect, Turkey will continue to see claims of corruption being made against all governments even if radical changes are introduced to the auditing system. Yes, but what is the solution?
Mustafa Özyürek, a former field auditor and the general accountant and İstanbul deputy for the CHP, thinks that unless the auditing system is reformed, corruption cannot be prevented.
He noted that audits in Turkey are performed by the inspection boards of the public institutions, the Higher Inspection Board (YDK), the Presidential Public Inspection Board (DDK) and the Supreme Court of Accounts. "The inspection boards are dysfunctional. Governments are audited by the people that they appoint. An inspector is expected to inspect a minister, undersecretary, deputy undersecretary or general manager. Such an inspection does not produce reliable results. Suppose that inspection has been conducted properly. If, during this inspection, an irregularity is found, the minister decides whether it should be prosecuted or not. For this reason, corrupt practices performed in the current period cannot be identified. Only those performed in the term of the previous government can be found," he said.
Özyürek believes that the YDK and the DDK are problematical organizations. "Turkey should ensure the autonomy of its auditing mechanisms. Otherwise, we cannot prevent fraud and corruption," he noted.
Özyürek pointed out that the audit system in place in Turkey is considerably defective in terms of detecting corrupt practices and that this is further aggravated by the failure of local administrations to abide by principles of transparency.
He asserts that changes to municipal development plans are not made transparently and that it is similarly hard to expect municipal councils to make their decisions in a transparent manner. He added that while the Public Procurement Authority (KİK) was established upon pressures from the EU, it is not given the authority to manage public tenders, as the government tends to insert the exception that says, "This law is exempt from the provisions of the public procurement law" into every new piece of legislation.
"We, as the CHP, will propose an independent and autonomous audit system, as currently charges of corruption cannot be properly prosecuted due to a defective expert opinion system," he said. He argues that, given this picture, the corrupt practices that come to light are only the ones that are discovered accidentally or are due to a disagreement over the sharing of corrupt income among accomplices. He acknowledged that the CHP has discovered the corruption claims about the Turkish Petroleum Refineries Corporation (TÜPRAŞ) and Dişli only incidentally. He added that the CHP will concentrate its efforts on the corrupt practices of the AK Party.
Ergüven: A national audit board is needed
Public Auditors Association (DENETDE) President Atılay Ergüven sees a lack of resolve by the government as the most important reason for Turkey's failure to uproot corruption.
Ergüven, a former inspector at the Health Ministry, was removed from office due to, he claims, his fight against corruption. He said although the court ordered his reappointment to his former office, the ministry has failed to abide by the court order. He highlights that political parties tend to make outrageous commitments concerning the fight against corruption, which they fail to keep afterwards.
"Governments just pretend to prevent corruption. Symbolic corruption cases are offered to create sensation or big impact while large-scale corrupt practices are conducted behind the scenes," he said.
Noting that the current auditing system in Turkey cannot produce reliable results, he indicated: "The state and bureaucracy are involved in some part of all corruption cases in Turkey. Governments tolerate the bureaucrats appointed by them when they are accused of corruption. Lack of a proper registration system nurtures corruption and vice versa."
Ergüven explained that they have prepared a draft bill concerning the establishment of a national audit board which would enable independent auditing as in the US and the EU; he said they have submitted it to former presidents, and that they intend to give it also to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, although he has consistently refused to give an appointment to them.
"Auditing should not be left to the whims of politicians or bureaucrats. This government wants to eliminate even the inspection boards. Cases of corruption are accidentally uncovered. This is just the tip of the iceberg," he argued.
According to a report published by the World Bank on June 26, 2008, Turkey showed considerable progress with respect to accountability and the fight against corruption in 2007 compared to 1996.
According to the bank's 2008 Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) report, Turkey's percentile rank for the category of freedom of speech and accountability, one of the six key governance indicators used in the research, rose to 41.8 percent, up from 34.0 in 1996. Turkey's percentile rank in the control of corruption category rose from 57.8 to 59.4 in 2007. The indicator measuring political instability and violence rose to 20.7 last year from 8.7 in 1996. However, the supremacy of the rule of law fell to 53.3 from 55.2 in the same period.
According to the World Bank report, many developing country governments including Turkey are making important gains in the control of corruption. Political and institutional reforms are empowering Turkey in its fight against corruption, the report says. The strengthening of the DDK and the law on access to information, passed in 2003, that allowed citizens to seek information from public institutions are listed as important actions in the fight against corruption.
According the 10th Global Corruption Survey conducted on Aug. 12, 2008, by Ernst & Young, an auditing and counseling firm, 68 percent of executives of international firms surveyed believe that measures against bribery and corruption are not sufficiently strong in Turkey.
The survey, conducted with the participation of 1,186 top executives from 33 countries, showed that there is a rising awareness against bribery and this has encouraged international organizations, including the UN, to draft important anti-bribery agreements.
The participants noted that anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws in Turkey have been made stronger, although existing sanctions and public pressures are behind the worldwide average.
This implies that legal sanctions cannot be properly implemented in Turkey. However, compared to previous periods, the anti-bribery laws have become stronger in the last five years, the survey found.
According to the survey, the rate of success by internal audits in detecting and preventing bribery and corruption is 72 percent worldwide, but 52 percent in Turkey. On the other hand, 52 percent of executives in Turkey believe that auditors are sufficiently informed about bribery, corruption, risks and indicators.
Recently, European Parliament member Frank Vanhecke, in noting that a working group of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) had expressed serious concerns about Turkey's implementation of the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions, asked EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn whether Turkey, a party to the convention since 2000, had failed to implement its standards.
Rehn responded: "The commission attaches great importance to Turkey's anti-corruption policies. A new project titled the Ethical Project for Prevention of Corruption is being implemented in Turkey. Under this project, public institutions, local authorities, nongovernmental organizations and universities will work together in order to promote an ethical culture not only centrally, but also throughout rural Turkey."
In the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International in early 2007, it was noted that Turkey had made progress, moving from the 65th rank in 2005 to 60th in 2006.
The report stressed that while the corruption perception in the judicial system was relatively low in the first 60 years of the republic, it had started to rise over the last 20 years, which shows that the public is losing trust in the judicial system.
It further argued that the government's involvement in appointments of judges and prosecutors makes the judicial system vulnerable to political interventions and that judges and prosecutors may abuse their immunities. The report also listed the expert opinion mechanism in the Turkish judicial system as a backdoor for corrupt practices.
Reports prepared by experts tend to be false, misleading or wrong, while Turkish judges readily accept them as true without further inquiry, it noted.
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