Saturday, July 3, 2010

Addendum to Corruption Post

I got the following comment to last week's corruption post:

bribery and corruption is not instutionalized in Turkey anymore as they used to be back in the days. worse is you know that and still shamelessly posted it. why r u hatin on ur country?? or were just trying to be funny and more personal w the readers?

Actually, I had not said that bribery and corruption had become more institutionalized in Turkey- I reread my post, but could not find anything from which that could have been inferred. In fact, the implication of my post, based on this single case, is just the opposite: The cop refused to take 300 bucks, so Turkey should be getting better in the corruption scale. 

But I would argue that there is corruption in Turkey and while it is not more than back in the days, it is certainly not significantly less, either (I am not just making guesses, you can look at the Transparency International indices through time or just compare the 2005 and 2009 World Bank Investment Climate Assessment surveys.

And if you would like to do a peer comparison, it is better than almosts all of its neighbors, but nowhere near the Brits, Yanks or Germans.

Bear in mind that I am not saying Turks are inherently corrupt (or Iraqis or Greeks for that matter). I subscribe to the school that it is all about the institutional set-up and incentives, but given the huge literature on the subject, I would not attempt to lecture here...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i guess that the reader didnt read your article properly.in fact you praised the police officer who refused the money politely.
i dont know how correct the international ranking index on this sujet.how did they mesure?
for example if the father of our president is awarded some public contracts by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality?is that corruption?definitily it is not ethical.Politicians would resign in the countries like usa or uk under the name of conflict of interests but in turkey that is seen normal,ordinary.
so, how these international index treat the situations like this?

Emre Deliveli said...

Hello;

Thnx for the comment; I responded to your question here:
http://emredeliveli.blogspot.com/2010/07/another-addendum-to-corruption-post-how.html

As for the original article- the reader (oil_spill)is kinda right:)- I was being a bit sarcastic, but I really did not mean that corruption is getting worse in Turkey...

Anyway, thnx again for the comments...

Best,

Emre

oil_spill said...

Dear Anonymous come back to me, you shouldn't be in making uneducated guesses on reader comments business...

"Politicians would resign in the countries like usa or uk under the name of conflict of interests but in turkey that is seen normal,ordinary."

This statement shows how much you know about how the politicians -legislators- and the politics operate in countries you mentioned above. I m not saying we don't have corrupt politicians bureaucrats or policemen in TR. I found the post unfair. (A post that had been written with good intentions) And I did not like the conclusion. Thats it.

For your future reference on this subject (ethics in politics in the developed countries) please google "lobbying" (beginner) and "Citizens United v Federal Election Commission" (advanced). Thx