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Challenges of Ethics Enforcement in Turkish Public Bureaucracy: CEPS Case Study

Explore the conflicts and ambiguities faced by the Council of Ethics for the Public Service (CEPS) in Turkey, with insights on authority clashes and strategic shortcomings in implementing ethical standards.

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Challenges of Ethics Enforcement in Turkish Public Bureaucracy: CEPS Case Study

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  1. THE PROBLEMS OF CONFLICT OF AUTHORISATION AND AMBIGUITY OF DUTY IN THE TURKISH PUBLIC BUREAUCRACY: THE CASE OF COUNCIL OF ETHICS FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE (CEPS) Res.Assist. Ezgi SECKINER Assoc.Prof. Ugur OMURGONULSEN Hacettepe University Department of Political Science and Public Administration Ankara-Turkey seckiner@hacettepe.edu.tr omur@hacettepe.edu.tr

  2. Council of Ethics for the Public Service (CEPS), is a new institution that observes and then conducts ethical inquiries on the conducts of higher-level public officials in Turkey on the basis ethical principles and standards. • Since the date CEPS was established (2004), it has been debated that CEPS has been in conflict of task and authority with other controlling institutions, particularly with institutional inspection boards and disciplinary committees in terms of ethical inquiry.

  3. CEPS has two tasks: • 1) Spreading ethical culture and creating ethical awareness in the public setor viaformal and informal ethics trainings. (awareness function). • 2) Announcing its decisions about ethical violations of ethics principles via the Official Gazette (sanction).(even this unique ethical sanction was annulled by the Constitutional Court in 2010).

  4. Those tasks bring two problems: • 1) Conflict of Authority (with institutional inspection and disciplinary boards). • 2) Task Ambiguity (with ethics commissions).

  5. Interviews • According to the some experts of CEPS, the sphere of task and power is clearly indicated in its law. CEPS deals with the high-ranking public officials who are clearly stated in the law. Inspection and discipline committees deal not with high-ranking bureucrats but lower-level officials. Thus, it does not have a power conflict with these institutions in this respect.

  6. 2) The Carrot-Stick Methaphor “When one performs an action, using the rabbit metaphor, depending on the result, you either reward him, that is to say you give him a carrot, or punish him; you show him the stick. We, at present, are at a situation in which we have undertaken both the carrot and stick parts of the action. The review committees and discipline committees also do function as the stick. Here, coincidences naturally take place. Our main task shall be to give the carrot.”

  7. 3) “In the studies made under the topic of prevention and reduction of corruption ‘the absence of preventive mechanism’ is often underlined. Ethics is a concept which is stated in order to put preventive mechanisms into action. What is preventive mechanism? It is the consciences of the individuals. We, by emphasizing ethics, by training, try to clean (restart) the dirty consciences of the individuals to some extent.”

  8. Inability to Institutionalize 4) CEPShas not yet gained its legitimacy since 2004 and has not been fully accepted by the present controlling institutions. “The Council of Ethics, is hereinafter treated as the child who just moved to the neighbourhood. That is to say, it has been excluded by the existent bureaucracy; inspection and disicplinary, supreme councils. Whereas, our task sphere is not much related to punishment or sanction. We have made training seminaries in 10 regions. Inspection boards do not conduct training programmes. Our goals (fight against corruption) are the same with them, methods are different. We, in some sense, are “shareholders” with them, in a popular word. There is the fear of “if the Council of Ethics will steal our roles?” Which is not right.”

  9. Task Ambiguity • “Institutional ethics commissions do not exactly know what to do. They are in act supposed to determine strategy for ethics training. The members of the ethics commissions have the duty to make recommendations to and to guide the personnel about the ethics issue, however, this does not take place in the implementation. Just think, what does making recommendations to and guiding them mean? How it is going to be carried out? No manager warns his or her personnel saying “you are not behaving ethically”. He or she has no such authority foreseen in the laws.”

  10. Suggestions • CEPS should primarily be dealing not with the sanction part of the fight against corruption (hard measures) but with the training part (soft measures); in other words, it should work for filling the gap of preventive mechanism. • Structures such as inspection and disciplinaryboardsshould support the task of increasing ethical consciousness which CEPS carries out by trainings and organizing projects.

  11. CEPS, Department of Human Rights, Ombudsman (in the proposal of constitutional amendment), Equality Committee, and Board of Review of Access to Informationmay be united under one body. • This new body should enjoy its autonomy, public entity and its own personnel and budget. • The relationship with this new body and the Inspection Board of the Prime Ministry (which is currently assigned to a role of combating corruption) should be clarified.

  12. THANKS FOR LISTENING…

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