Historic low for Turkey in the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index
31.01.2023
Life in Turkey may sometimes be a scene from Stephen King’s novel. But King once said that “hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies”. This morning of January 31st, we woke up hoping that Turkey did not fall in the 2022 Corruption Perception Index. Yet, we saw the unavoidable fact that Turkey’s ranking has fallen again. Turkey came out 101st out of 180 countries and scored 36 on the perceived corruption scale.
The Eastern Europe and Central Asia average showed a decline this year, dropping one point to 35. Among these countries, Turkey reached a historical low and is ranked 14th among the G20 countries and 37th among the 38 OECD countries which is not a big surprise after the statement of OECD Working Group on Bribery: Türkiye should immediately address long-standing key recommendations to fight foreign bribery [1].
In 2022, the world was rocked by Russia-Ukraine war. Transparency International refers to global security in its press release and states that “global peace has been deteriorating for 15 years. Corruption has been both a key cause and result of this”.
Concerning Turkey, the CPI 2022 results showed once again that the main democracy principles, state of law, and freedom of the press are the key elements in fighting against corruption and impunity and low enforcement enable corruption to spread in the country. Given the methodology of the CPI, the index reflects the views of experts and business people on the perception of public sector corruption in the country. Therefore, Turkey must take concrete and persuasive actions to establish rule of law in the judiciary which will have a direct impact on the economy and foreign investment.
With the heading “a world urgently in need of action”, Transparency International makes it clear in its press statement that it is time for a wake-up call for international leaders to finally commit to addressing rampant corruption. “Hope is a waking dream”, as Aristotle said. We believe that Turkey will wake up from this nightmare in the coming years.
[1] https://www.oecd.org/turkiye/oecd-working-group-on-bribery-statement-turkiye-should-immediately-address-long-standing-key-recommendations-to-fight-foreign-bribery.htm