Public Sector Reforms to Fight Corruption in Turkey

TURKISH STUDIES, 2017 VOL. 18, NO. 3, 439–458 https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2017.1314185

Public sector reforms to fight corruption in Turkey: a case of failed Europeanization? Digdem Soyaltin Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Istanbul Kemerburgaz University, Istanbul, Turkey

ABSTRACT This article examines the practical application of legal reforms to fight corruption in Turkey, focusing on three policy sectors: civil administration, public finance management and public procurement. Facing increasing pressure, incumbent governments have adopted international anti-corruption norms and programs in the last two decades. However, the adoption and adaptation of formal institutions tends to remain decoupled from informal behavioral practices, thereby curbing the effectiveness of Europeanization in the Turkish public sector – albeit to varying degrees. The policy comparison of this article shows that external anti-corruption efforts, especially those initiated by the EU, can help domestic actors to address the problem of decoupling when certain domestic factors are present.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 14 August 2016; Accepted 24 March 2017

KEYWORDS Europeanization; decoupling; anti-corruption; governance; domestic politics; Turkey

Introduction Corruption has been a pervasive problem in Turkey for many years.1 It has played a significant role in the economic crises the country has faced since Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 the 1980s. Yet, a decisive anti-corruption policy was only formulated after the 2001 financial crisis, which brought the worst economic recession in the history of the republic.2 Coupled with the acceleration of the EU accession process, after 1999, the devastating consequences of the crisis on the economic and political situations compelled a more prominent fight against corruption. It is in this context that incumbent governments, mainly formed by the Justice and Development Party (Turkish acronym, AKP), have introduced a massive amount of reforms to fight corruption, in line with the programs and norms of international organizations, including the EU.

CONTACT Digdem Soyaltin [email protected] Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Istanbul Kemerburgaz University, Mahmutbey Dilmenler Caddesi, No. 26, 34217 Bağcılar, Istanbul, Turkey © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 440 D. SOYALTIN

Combating corruption is an integral part of the EU’s enlargement policy. Very significant changes in Turkey’s legal and institutional framework have taken place with regard to the fight against corruption in the last two decades, in order to comply with the EU’s political conditionality. Despite the legal improvements, Turkey’s score in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI), published by the Transparency International, has dropped in recent years. In the 2014 CPI results, Turkey lost 5 points (from 50 points in 2013 to 45 in the 2014 results) and moved from the 53rd least corrupt country to the 64th.3 Many scholars also confirm the fact that the anti-corruption reforms largely failed to promote better governance in Turkey’s public sector and remained decoupled from behavioral practices.4 The real puzzle in the Turkish case is not the decoupling of formal changes and behavioral practices per se; but rather the divergence in the dynamics of decoupling across policy sectors. This article investigates why external actors have a different impact and success in addressing the existing decoupling in fighting corruption in some policy sectors and not others. By comparing the external promotion of anti-corruption norms and the provisions in civil administration, public finance management and public procurement in Turkey from 1999 – when Turkey was given the status of candidate country for the EU membership – to 2016, this article identifies the interplay of two key factors that filter externally induced change. I argue that bureaucratic costs and administrative co-ordination account for the cross-sectoral variation in enforcing anti-corruption reforms, which give rise to differential institutional change. The detailed empirical analysis illustrates that external actors prove to be successful in promoting anti-corruption-related institutional change in policy sectors only when bureaucratic costs are low and administrative co- ordination is strong. This is the case in civil administration where ruling elites place the fight against corruption under the direct control of the government but external actors still manage to empower administrative authorities

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 to bring about institutional change. Evidence suggests that institutional change remains shallow or selective when either of these factors is missing, as in the case of public finance management and public procurement, respect- ively. While the lack of administrative co-ordination mitigates the impact of legal reforms and results in shallow change in the public finance management, the emergence of an autonomous public procurement agency incurs high bureaucratic costs for the ruling elites and paves the way for selective practices. This article contributes to the literature on Europeanization and, more generally, on external good governance promotion by showing us external actors can promote institutional change and induce governments to address the problem of decoupling, if they meet with favorable domestic conditions. By highlighting bureaucratic politics and administrative co-ordination this TURKISH STUDIES 441

article identifies two conditions deserving of more attention in future literature on Europeanization. The rest of this article is divided into four sections. Following the introduction, section two presents the empirical puzzle in more detail and depicts how prominent explanations of Europeanization remain insufficient to explain the cross-sectoral variation that is observed in the Turkish case. Section three introduces the theoretical framework that accounts for when and to what extent external actors help countries to address the gap between formal change and behavioral practices. Section four presents the empirical data. The empirical data comes from in-depth analysis of national policy docu- ments such as medium-term anti-corruption programs, reports of various international organizations, media outlets and press releases from the government. In order to triangulate the results, I conducted 45 semi-structured interviews with policymakers, bureaucrats, policy experts, as well as officials from the EU delegation to Turkey and Transparency International in Turkey, between April 2012 and February 2013 in Ankara, Istanbul and Berlin.5 Finally, the last section concludes the paper.

State of the art: Europeanization and external good governance promotion External incentives and political interests The existing research on Europeanization and external governance promotion has identified the differential empowerment of domestic actors as a core mechanism or scope condition of domestic change.6 Domestic change is facilitated if EU incentives discourage domestic actors to veto adaptation to EU requirements (veto players), or if they empower domestic reform coalitions by providing them with additional resources to exploit the oppor- tunities offered by Europeanization (formal supporting institutions).7

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 As shown by the evidence from the CEE countries, external incentives and capacity-building measures empowered pro-reformist domestic actors vis-à- vis veto players to push through domestic reforms and balance the costs of adoption arising from a high misfit between European and domestic structures.8 However, conditionality mechanisms do not just originate from the EU, but also the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. These institutions promoted the adoption of EU reforms consistent with principles of market economy and good governance. At the same time, the monitoring mechanisms of various international organizations, such the Council of Europe (CoE), has a decisive impact on the overall Europeanization as they shape incentives of the domestic actors to adopt corrective and/or further legal changes.9 External actors also provide the domestic actors with the technical knowledge, skills, financial resources and information to strengthen 442 D. SOYALTIN

domestic capacity and promote the practical application of legal reforms. Reform propensity is further increased if external incentives and assistance align with the political preferences and survival strategies of the incumbent regimes. Studies on the Europeanization of current candidate states and neighborhood countries have identified alignment of the domestic preferences with external demands as a new scope condition for EU-induced domestic change.10

Necessary but not sufficient conditions for Turkey As a long-standing problem for Turkey, corruption has been one of the major concerns of the EU in Turkey’s enlargement process.11 Since Turkey obtained an accession perspective in December 1999, the EU has played a substantial role in the formulation of anti-corruption policies. The National Action Plan, issued in the aftermath of the 2001 financial crisis, came as a direct response to the demands of the EU, which largely overlapped with the IMF’sconditions.12 Yet, with the election of the AKP, the anti-corruption reform process gained fresh momentum as the new government started to introduce decisive reforms in key policy areas such as the public sector, energy, banking and construction, which were heavily affected by corruption.13 A year later, in 2003, an Emergency Action Plan was adopted with a special section on corruption. Outdated anti-corruption laws were revised to bring them in line with the EU standards and new regulations were introduced, while several agencies were authorized in specific areas or issues to deal with the control of corruption.14 As mentioned by an officer from the EU delegation, ‘The AKP government’s ambitious agenda to fight corruption, as one of Turkey’s biggest problems, had a considerable impact on the EU’s decision to open accession negotiations with Turkey in October 2005.’15 Nonetheless, the EU membership conditionality has become a less power-

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 ful motivation for pushing government toward compliance with EU rules, as the climate of Turkish-EU relations has significantly deteriorated since 2006.16 Aside from the low EU conditionality, the IMF did not offer sizeable and credible incentives to pay off the costs of institutional change. The Turkish government did not sign another Stand-by Agreement with the IMF after 2008. However, the ratification of major international anti-corruption conventions such as the Council of Europe Civil and Criminal Law Con- ventions on Corruption under the EU pressure forced Turkey to participate in the monitoring of anti-corruption measures, affected by GRECO.17 It was partly the mild international pressure, expressed indirectly through the monitoring mechanisms of the GRECO, that promoted the adoption of a new anti- corruption strategy in 2010 and the Strategic Plan of 2011–15, even in the absence of more direct pressure from the EU or the IMF.18 More importantly, TURKISH STUDIES 443

during this period, external demands with regard to the fight against corruption largely aligned with the domestic policy agenda of the ruling AKP.19 Taking office in 2002, after a corrupt and ineffective coalition regime, the AKP government declared the fight against corruption to be one of the three priorities of the government’s policies.20 In its party program, the AKP claimed to have the ‘most intensive struggle’ against corruption.21 The fight against corruption not only helped to re-elect the incumbent government, it has also become one of the main components of the government’s neo- liberal economic program.22 The ruling AKP effectively surmounted the neo- liberalization process and managed to combine a high growth rate with low inflation even during the years of financial crisis in the EU.23 This general success in the economy allowed the AKP government to invest heavily in public services and contributed to the party’s electoral success, even as a his- toric corruption scandal erupted in December 2013.24 It is argued that the corruption charges came as a result of the rift between Erdoğan’s government and the Hizmet movement, led by Fethullah Gülen, whose followers have, allegedly, occupied positions in the police and the judiciary. While no criminal charges were filed, the then PM Erdoğan reshuffled his Cabinet, replaced 10 ministers amid a graft probe, and purged thousands of police officers and hundreds of prosecutors. In the following year, the law on High Council of Judges and Prosecutors, the legally independent self-governance body of the judiciary, was amended in a way to transfer many critical powers of the Plenary of the Council to the Minister of Justice. The government also restricted the scope of investigations by state prosecutors.25 The unlawful government interference in the judiciary diluted the gains made in earlier anti-corruption reforms.26 Yet, the ruling AKP placed the fight against corruption in its priority list in the wake of the local polls27 and secured enough votes to form another majority government in the snap elections of November 2015. Following the general elections, the Davu- toğlu government introduced a transparency package aimed at tackling cor-

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 ruption and created an anti-corruption body. Yet, in the program of the new government led by Yıldırım, fighting corruption was not mentioned even once.28 The readmission agreement, signed by the EU, created a new impetus for reforms in Turkey. In April 2016, Ankara introduced a new anti-corruption plan since fighting corruption is one of the EU’s conditions for a visa-free travel regime for Turkey.29 Nevertheless, the new plan never came into effect due to rising political turmoil in the country after the attempted coup in July 2016, which was organized by a small faction of the military, believed to have ties to the Hizmet movement. In summary, the EU accession process played a major contribution in the formulation of anti-corruption laws and the establishment of various anti- corruption institutions. Yet, the legal reform efforts had a little impact on corruption. This outcome is at least partly due to the decoupling of formal 444 D. SOYALTIN

institutions and behavioral practices. Most remained unimplemented in practice,30 the domestic change with regard to the fight against corruption has also varied in the Turkish public sector. Signaling the growing problems of policy incoherence with regard to the government’s policy-making, the variation in domestic institutional change cannot be explained by the above-mentioned factors.

Domestic scope conditions External incentives and assistance are proven to be necessary conditions to generate institutional change over time. Yet, in order to explain the cross-sectoral variation that is observed in the Turkish case, this study introduces two domestic conditions that account for the variation in how well Europeaniza- tion has promoted the fight against corruption in the Turkish public sector. These conditions are: bureaucratic costs and administrative co-ordination. In the Europeanization literature, cost-benefit calculations of governments are generally explained by the incentives provided by external actors. Within the incentive-based approach, ‘a government adopts EU rules if the benefits of EU rewards exceed the domestic adoption costs.’31 These conceptualizations ignore the case-specific bureaucratic costs that emanate from power struggles at the administrative level between major political actors and bureaucratic state elites. This analysis, therefore, maintains that in order to account for cross-sectoral variation, the cost-benefit argument should be reassessed. I argue that, when legal reforms increase the organizational autonomy of administrative bodies vis-à-vis the government, they incur bureaucratic costs for the latter, which may outweigh the positive incentives of the EU’s political conditionality. Faced with higher bureaucratic costs, governments become less willing to implement further or corrective legal changes and empower public institutions with more autonomy. Political willingness is, however, not sufficient to fully explain the differential dynamics of decoupling

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 because it cannot account for administrative change, or the lack thereof. In order to account for the variation in administrative change across policy areas I propose domestic capacity as a decisive factor to produce administrative change. The literature suggests that external assistance empowers domestic actors to bring about administrative change.32 In the case of the fight against corruption, Turkey heavily benefited from some forms of capacity building in the framework of various EU-funded projects specifically targeting corruption and thematic World Bank public-sector reform programs, as well as from par- ticipation in trans-governmental networks, such as Twinning and the Organ- isation of Economic Cooperation and Development, Support for Improvement of Governance and Management, and diverse legal and technical advice through various European consultants.33 TURKISH STUDIES 445

Yet, I argue that external assistance promotes domestic capacity only when there is strong co-ordination between administrative stakeholders in the rel- evant policy sector. The strong administrative co-ordination neutralizes the veto players by involving them in the allocation of external assistance, on the one hand, and increases the effectiveness of external assistance in strengthening the capacities of administrators on the other. This is not about having resources, but the administrative efficiency to co-ordinate them to implement the adopted legal rules. The combination of the two factors – bureaucratic costs and administrative co-ordination – gives rise to four hypotheses that specify sufficient conditions for addressing decoupling and expect different patterns of institutional change. When a low level of bureaucratic costs combines with strong administrative co-ordination, better chances emerge for the external actors to promote political willingness and domestic capacity to bring about institutional change. Institutional change remains shallow or selective when either of these is missing. In order to account for shallow and selective institutional change, I consider two dimensions of the dependent variable: legal and administrative change. The former is about the changes in the laws and legal rules or adoption of a certain program while the latter refers to the establishment of law enforcement structures (policy agencies and instruments), which are necessary to practically apply and enforce the legal changes on the ground. Table 1 illustrates the tendencies toward institutional change expected to emerge from the interplay of two explanatory variables, ‘political willingness by bureaucratic costs’ and ‘domestic capacity by administrative co-ordination.’ Political willingness with domestic capacity results in effective institutional change. Political elites are willing to adopt legal changes when external incentives compensate the low level of bureaucratic costs, domestic administrative authorities become capable of generating administrative change when they are well coordinated. Political willingness without domestic

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 capacity, however, results in legal change with a low level of administrative change and, consequently, in shallow institutional change. In the case of weak capacity, the shallow institutional change is still likely to occur since

Table 1. Expected institutional change patterns. Political willingness by bureaucratic costs High Low Domestic capacity by administrative co-ordination Strong (1) Effective Institutional change (3) Selective institutional change Higher Legal change + Higher Lower Legal change + Higher Administrative change Administrative change Weak (2) Shallow institutional change (4) Inertia Higher Legal change + Lower No Legal change + No Administrative change Administrative change 446 D. SOYALTIN

the governing elites are willing to adopt legal reforms in order to receive incentives from the external actors, or to avoid sanctions. Combined with low political willingness, strong domestic capacity results in low-level legal change with a high level of administrative change, and leads to selective institutional change. In the case of low political willingness, domestic capacity is likely to trigger selective institutional change as the administrative authorities have an interest in becoming eligible for the provision of assistance from external actors. In the absence of both, the outcome is inertia.

Anti-corruption-related institutional change in the Turkish public sector: a cross-sectoral analysis The overall argument is illustrated by comparing patterns of anti-corruption- related institutional change in the public sector of Turkey with regard to the civil administration, public finance management and public procurement. As major elements of integrity in public sector governance, these three policy areas were designated as highly ineffective and corrupt during the 1990s due to a lack of implementation of anti-corruption laws and programs.34 Yet, the impact of external anti-corruption efforts resulted in varying degrees of institutional change in three policy sectors, despite the equally high misfit between domestic policies and international rules. In the civil administration, legal change has combined with administrative change in increasingly effective institutional change. In public finance management, by contrast, legal change has hardly been followed up by administrative change, resulting in shallow institutional change. In public procurement, finally, a lower level of legal change contrasts with a higher level of administrative change and has given way to selective institutional change.

Civil administration

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 Civil service reforms followed the general trend of anti-corruption-related reforms in Turkey, gaining momentum between 1999 and 2005, only to be suspended until the national anti-corruption strategy was approved in 2010. Mostly driven by EU incentives, the 1999–2005 amendments covered some of the reforms long demanded by the EU such as the definition of specific provisions for public servants accused of corruption-related offenses and adoption of a regulation for civil service code.35 The code includes principles of ethical behavior, such as avoiding conflict of interest, prohibition against the misuse of duty and authority for deriving benefits and declaration of assets.36 Furthermore, a new monitoring body, the CEPS, was established to conduct the necessary investigation and inquiries on public officials identified for violating ethical codes. Together with the Ombudsman, established by the TURKISH STUDIES 447

constitutional amendment in 2010, the Ethics Council is the major institution for lodging complaints against the public sector. Related local units, namely the public ethics commissions (ECs) were also set up in order to bring bottom-up enforcement and self-regulatory mechanisms in terms of ethical inquiry. Today, there are more than 2000 ECs in various public institutions.37 Previously, the State Personnel Presidency (SPP) and disciplinary boards, which are administratively related to the PM’s Office, were monitoring the application of the civil service codes by public servants. However, in time, these old disciplinary authorities were transformed into ineffective advisory boards in favor of their disciplinary superiors. Furthermore, there was no co-ordination between the SPP and the disciplinary boards.38 In the civil administration, the government placed the fight against corruption under its control. The CEPS was established as an administratively and financially non-autonomous institution. Similar to the SPP, it is located under the office of the PM with no separate budget. Given its weak organizational autonomy, the establishment of the CEPS incurred low bureaucratic costs for the government. Under these conditions, the political elites remained willing to introduce further reforms to comply with externally induced conditions. When Ankara adopted a new national action plan and strategy to fight against corruption, in 2010, most of the listed measures were related with the civil service codes of conduct.39 For instance, with an amendment to the Civil Service Law, legal protection was provided for civil servants who report suspicions of corruption in good faith. In addition, the CEPS was entitled to determine a list of ethical codes for elected officials within the local government. With the legal changes adopted, the civil administration has become well structured in terms of legal standards and better harmonized with EU rules.40 On the other hand, the external capacity-building activities have only been moderately effective in empowering the administrative agencies.

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 The capacity-building activities strengthened the CEPS and ECs in terms of the quantity and quality of the staff. Most notably, the Ethics for the Preven- tion of Corruption in Turkey (TYEC) project ‘made the CEPS and the ECs visible and made them function.’41 In the field of the fight against corruption in Turkey, the TYEC and follow-up projects that targeted CEPS and ECs were the only ones co-founded by the CoE and the EU. The Ethics Platform, which was launched by the CEPS and CoE in 2013, made the only significant attempt to address coordination problem in fighting corruption. Today, these administrative units have become technically competent and developed a well coordinated approach to carrying out ethical inquiry.42 The officers from the project office underlined the difficulty of implementing a project addressing corruption in Turkey. They intentionally started with these ‘light projects addressing petty (administrative) corruption’43 in order to 448 D. SOYALTIN

receive support from the government for anti-corruption reforms.44 The AKP Government showed a special interest in the project. The then PM Erdoğan even attended the opening ceremony of the project in Ankara. However, this also illustrates that ‘the ruling AKP gives special priority to the fight against petty corruption permeating the public sector while high-level corruption is mostly left aside.’45 After the success of the first TYEC project, the second and third round of the TYEC started with the aim of enhancing administrative capacity. Finally, the Prevention of Corruption and Promotion of Ethics, funded by the EU, was initiated to provide technical assistance to the institutions functioning within the field of civil administration and civil society organizations. This is the one of the rare projects to address corruption in Turkey (EU Ministry, 2014). The CEPS and ECs regarded these projects as an opportunity structure to develop their abilities for implementing their own policy agendas even under a limited legal framework. Strong administrative co-ordination between newly established units neutralized the resistance coming from old agencies and increased the effectiveness of external assistance in strengthening the capacities of administrators. In this context, the CoE officers evaluate the administrative co-ordination between CEPS and ECs within the Directorate of Land Registry as a success story, which should be emulated by other public agencies. This slight but ‘unexpected’46 progress can be interpreted as a consequence of the institutionalization of the CEPS and ECs, and their increased activity in the enforcement of the codes of conduct in practice. Mostly driven by the ever-increasing administrative impetus, the progress I observe in the implementation of civil service codes is likely to progress, since the reforms in this policy area do not incur high bureaucratic costs for the government.

Public finance management As a part of country’s formal Europeanization process, a comprehensive law

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 on Public Finance Management and Control (PFMC) was adopted in 2005. The law aimed to address some key priorities of the EU regular reports such as the revision of the law on the external audit agency (Turkish Court of Accounts (TCA)) in line with the international auditing standards and the development of a new board for Internal Audit under the Ministry of Finance (MoF).47 Following the adoption of the PFMC Law in 2002, a law on the TCA was drafted in 2005. Until that time, the TCA, the MoF and the Higher Inspection Board at the PM office used to conduct the external auditing on an ex-ante control basis.48 Yet, the drafted TCA law envisaged the Court as a more powerful supreme audit institution and a prominent actor in fighting against corruption. Another big inspection unit within the MoF was also closed down and the responsibilities and staff of the High Inspection Board TURKISH STUDIES 449

of the PM were transferred to the TCA.49 In this regard, all state institutions, including municipalities, public corporations, and the military were planned to be inspected by the TCA, the top public auditor that works on behalf of parliament, in a standard-driven audit fashion.50 In order to help the TCA perform its new tasks, internal audit units were set-up to replace existing inspection boards.51 Furthermore, a new Board was established under MoF to co-ordinate internal auditing. These legal reforms were all regarded as drastic changes in line with international standards of auditing. The political elites remained willing to adopt legal changes in the public finance management in order to receive an accession date from the EU and become eligible for the provision of EU funds.52 Yet, the extent of the competence and autonomy of the TCA became a hotly debated issue in high-level political circles. The AKP and military elites were unwilling to empower the Court with stronger autonomy despite their initial interest in the legal reform process. As a result, a diluted TCA law was adopted in 2010. Since the increasing bureaucratic costs failed to balance external rewards, the ruling AKP brought forward another amendment to the TCA law in 2012 and restructured the Court in line with its political preferences. The new amendments significantly narrowed the Court’s auditing mandate and its operational autonomy.53 The Court officials and officers from the EU delegation interviewed by the author underscored that they were uncomfortable with the adopted version of the law, which crippled the ability of the Court to monitor government agencies and ministries.54 As a result of these last-minute changes in June 2012, the Court could not send its auditing reports of state institutions to Par- liament for the first time in the history of the Republic.55 This is less due to the diverging external assistance than to the differing degree of efficiency with which the administration co-ordinates the resources to promote administrative change. It is worth noting that the TCA received technical and financial assistance

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 from various external actors. The EU twinning project that started with the National Audit Office of the United Kingdom provided special assistance for the re-establishment of the external and internal auditing system.56 Given this external assistance, the TCA and internal audit units established their regulatory frameworks, even under a diluted law. Yet, they largely failed to develop a co-ordinated approach in enforcing the new auditing standards in practice.57 As one senior officer from the MoF asserted, this is mostly due to resistance coming from well-established inspection boards acting as veto players. ‘There is little or no appreciation of the differences in terms of roles, responsibilities and objectives between inspection and internal audit.’58 Under these conditions the Court was also regarded as an outsider by the public institutions under its audit scope59 and had difficulty obtaining the account details and financial tables of public institutions.60 450 D. SOYALTIN

Unlike the civil administrative system, external assistance proved to be ineffective in promoting domestic capacity. Therefore, the legal changes were barely followed by administrative change resulting in a shallow change in public finance management. For instance, the Court was unable to properly audit the accounts of many public institutions in 2012 and 2013. Moreover, with a decision taken in December 2013, the Court announced that it would not be able to perform any audits in the next three years.61 At this point, ‘the TCA cannot de facto audit, but mostly remains de jure.’62 Today, the reports of the TCA are no longer submitted to parliament itself.63

Public procurement Following the provisions of the UN Model Law and EU Directives, a new public procurement law was put in force in 2002 with an objective to tackle the problem of irregularities and deficiencies in the procurement system, which remained, unreported or investigated during the 1990s.64 With the new law, an administratively and financially autonomous oversight body, namely the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), was set up. As an independent regulatory authority (IRA) the PPA is de facto not under the supervision of hierarchy and administrative tutelage.65 Establishment of an autonomous agency regulating the procurement regime has incurred high bureaucratic costs for the ruling elites since their ability to attract and finalize government investment and construction projects was significantly constrained. Even strong membership incentives failed to compensate the costs for the government. As a result, the ruling elites have become less willing to further legal changes in this policy sector, even at a time when membership conditionality was strong for Turkey. In contrast, various exemptions have been introduced to the law on an ad hoc basis, diverging the Turkish procurement regime from EU standards.66 Since 2002, around 135 new provisions were introduced to the PPL under a

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 total of 32 legal regulations. Most of these amendments brought derogations and exemptions to the law and strengthened the authority of the executive vis- à-vis the PPA.67 Involving political rent-seeking risks, the modifications in the procurement legislation, however, made it possible for a significant amount of goods, services, and works to be procured without going through a competitive and transparent tendering process. For instance, public–private partnerships (PPPs), which are exempted from PPL, have become tools for the delivery of large-scale infrastructure investments (e.g. airports, bridges, roads, electri- city generation and distribution facilities, etc.) in recent years.68 As Emek and Acar show, PPPs contracts have been awarded to a smaller group of compa- nies, which have allegedly close relations and affiliations with high-level repre- sentatives of the government.69 The domestic capital groups that rapidly grew TURKISH STUDIES 451

with the help of government procurements supported the AKP government’s regulation-adverse reforms with regard to the public procurement and have become big conglomerates in recent years. Disproportionately benefiting its own constituency, the AKP’s politico- business strategies accommodated the particularistic power relations in new forms.70 The massive corruption scandal that erupted in December 2013 shed light on the politics of privilege, rent seeking and clientelism. As a response to increasing political intervention, the PPA drafted a new law, which is based on the detailed suggestions of the European Commission, mostly related with the exemptions. Although the draft was blocked in the leg- islative process and newly introduced amendments in 2014 made the system highly vulnerable to corruption71 there are improvements in practical application of various legal standards. The progress in administrative change is explained by the strong co-ordination among administrative authorities that benefited from external assistance. In a similar way to the other two policy areas, the administrative authorities in this policy area were provided with technical and financial support from various external actors, most prominently from the EU. Moreover, the PPA officials have increasingly engaged with transnational networks including those in Europe and gained expertise in monitoring procurement policy and operating the PPA. The Turkish PPA is an active partner of the European Public Procurement Network, which is an international co-operation network of public procurement expert officials involving all EU member and candidate states and European Economic Area members.72 Using its expertise in the field, the PPA developed a legal basis for the electronic public procurement system in 2008. After only two years, in 2010, the Authority set up a website Platform (EPPP-Electronic Public Procurement Platform) and transferred all procurement processes into electronic media. In recent years, all contracting entities and an impressive number of economic operators registered in the electronic system. The platform has become a

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 central database of public procurement in Turkey and increased transparency in the process of procurement.73 Moreover, the increased usage of electronic tools resulted in an improvement in the value of public procurement, while the number of complaints drastically decreased. Today, Turkey is an e-procurement solutions leader particularly among the European Bank for Regional Development.74 In the case of public procurement, one must account for the strong co- ordination between the PPA and the MoF in developing e-procurement solutions that triggered change in practices. Like the other IRAs in Turkey, the PPA remains related to a ministry (namely the MoF), in the terms of Turkish administrative law. However, in contrast to other regulatory policies, the Min- istry did not act as a veto player in the public procurement policy,75 but contributed to the practical application of legal rules. 452 D. SOYALTIN

As in the case of the civil administration, external actors managed to empower the administrative agency in the public procurement, given the strong co-ordination. However, the external capacity-building facilities failed to balance the high bureaucratic costs for the incumbent regime. There- fore, the ruling elites selectively enforced public procurement standards in such a way to refrain from costs, but reward their business allies.76

Conclusion The research on Europeanization and external good governance promotion has acknowledged the role of the misfit between international and domestic structures and sizeable and credible membership incentives in promoting institutional change in accession countries. As indicated in the case of Turkey, the reforms may continue even without membership incentives as long as the EU demands align with the domestic incentives and political preferences of the ruling elites. Since 2002, AKP governments have introduced a massive amount of reforms advancing the legal and regulatory framework to fight corruption in the Turkish public sector. In 2010, the AKP government’s ambitious anti-corruption agenda resulted in the introduction of a new strategy for strengthening the fight against corruption. However, the ruling AKP selectively enforced anti-corruption measures in a way that consolidates its power by changing existing intuitionalist structures. In this regard, anti-corruption-related institutional change in the public sector, to a great extent, accommodated corruption, instead of eliminating it. Yet, it was a foregone conclusion that external actors, especially the EU, would totally fail to promote anti-corruption- related institutional change in Turkey. This article identifies domestic scope conditions under which external actors help domestic authorities to address the gap between good governance standards and corrupt practices, allowing at least a partial amelioration of the problem of decoupling.

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 As is illustrated by the empirical analysis, once the lack of bureaucratic costs is coupled with strong administrative co-ordination there emerge better chances for external anti-corruption efforts to promote real-world out- comes. In civil administration and public procurement external assistance has become effective to empower the administrative authorities in their power struggle with the ruling elites, so that the former can bring about institutional change. In these two policy fields the impetus for further administrative change has come from within the administration rather than political leader- ship. This result has immense importance in furthering domestic reforms in fighting corruption, not only in Turkey, but also in other EU accession and neighborhood policy countries where civil society organizations and the media have certainly been too weak to exert systematic pressure vis-à-vis the ruling elites. TURKISH STUDIES 453

Notes 1. Baran, “Corruption: The Turkish Challenge,” 130. 2. Öniş, “Beyond the 2001 financial crisis.” 3. Transparency International CPI 2014 has been released; 27 January 2016, available online at: http://en.seffaflik.org/corruption-perception-index-2015-has- been-released/. 4. Adaman, “Is Corruption a Drawback to Turkey”; Michael, “Anti-Corruption in the Turkey”; Ömürgönülsen and Doig, “Why the Gap?”; Ulusoy, “Turkey’s fight Against Corruption.” 5. Throughout this article the interviews are used anonymously since most of the interviewees preferred not to reveal their names. 6. Börzel and Risse, “Conceptualising the Domestic Impact”; Börzel and Risse, “From Europeanisation to Diffusion”; Cowles, Caporaso and Risse, Transform- ing Europe. 7. Börzel and Risse, “Conceptualising the Domestic Impact,” 63–9. 8. Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier, The Europeanisation; Börzel and Risse, “From Europeanisation to Diffusion.” 9. Jakobi, “E pluribus unum,” 93–9; Wolf, “Assessing Eastern Europe,” 101. 10. Börzel and Risse 2012, “From Europeanisation to Diffusion,” 198–9. 11. European Commission, “2003 Progress Report for Turkey,” 22. 12. Düzgit and Çarkoğlu, “Reforms for a Consolidated Democracy,” 137. 13. Ulusoy, “Turkey’s fight Against Corruption,” 3–4. 14. Unlike EU member and candidate countries, Turkey has no real centre of anti- corruption. Rather, several bodies authorised in specific areas or issues deal with control of corruption. 15. Interviews with officers, Political reforms Unit, EU Delegation to Turkey, April 2012, Ankara. 16. Noutcheva and Düzgit, “Lost in Europeanisation,” 68. 17. Doig, “Asking the right questions,” 13–14. 18. Interviews with officers, Department of External Relations, Ministry of Justice, April 2012, Ankara; Interviews with officers, PM Inspection Board, April 2012, Ankara. 19. Yilmaz and Soyaltin, “Zooming into the Domestic,” 19–20. 20. The other two were fight against poverty and restrictions (in Turkish 3Y kurali: Yoksulluk, Yolsuzluk, Yasaklar), available online at: http://m.akparti.org.tr/site/

Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 haberler/basbakan-Erdoğanin-2014-butce-gorusmeleri-konusmasinin-tam- metni/56600#1. 21. AKP, “Party Programme 2002,” 8. 22. Börzel, Soyaltin, and Yilmaz, “Same or Different,” 225. 23. Öniş, “Beyond the 2001 financial crisis,” 412–15. 24. Guardian, December 7, 2013. 25. Müftüler-Baç, “Judicial reform in Turkey,” 17–18. 26. Transparency International CPI 2014 has been released. 3 December 2014, available at: http://en.seffaflik.org/transparency-international%E2%80%B2s- corruption-perception-index-2014-has-been-released/. 27. Hurriyet Daily News, April 11, 2014. 28. Al Monitor, June 8, 2016. 29. European Commission, “Second Report on Progress,” 8. 30. Transparency International Turkey, June 2, 2016. 31. Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier, The Europeanisation, 12. 454 D. SOYALTIN

32. Falkner et al., Compliance; Knill, The Europeanisation of National Administrations. 33. Interviews with experts, Transparency International, Turkey Branch, June 2012, Istanbul; Interviews with Turkey project team, ANTICORRP (Anticor- ruption Policies Revisited: Global Trends and European Responses to the Chal- lenge of Corruption) Project, April 2012, Ankara. 34. Acar and Emek, “‘Building a Clear Government,” 189. 35. Interviews with a senior officer, CEPS, PM Office, April 2012, Ankara. 36. Ömürgönülşen and Doig, “Why the Gap?” 7. 37. Phone Interview with the short term advisor to the TYEC project, February 2013, Berlin. 38. Interviews with Turkey project team, ANTICORRP Project, April 2012, Ankara. 39. Interviews with officers, Prime Ministry Inspection Board, April 2012, Turkey; Interviews with experts, CEPS, PM Office, April 2012, Ankara. 40. Interview with an academician at Bosporus University, June, 2012, Istanbul; Interview with the short term advisor to the TYEC project, April, 2012, Ankara. 41. Phone Interview with the short term advisor to the TYEC project, February 2013, Berlin. 42. Interviews with the TYEC project experts, CoE Project Office, April, 2012, Ankara. 43. The literature differentiates between grand and petty corruption. Grand corruption is defined as corruption occurring at the highest levels of government in a way that requires significant subversion of the political, legal and economic systems. Petty (or bureaucratic) corruption, on the other hand, occurs at a smaller scale in the public administration. 44. See note 37. 45. See note 38. 46. Interview with the project coordinator of TYEC Project, CoE Project Office, April 2012, Ankara. 47. SIGMA, “General Assessment Turkey,” 19–23. 48. The traditional law-driven audit system turned into a routine bureaucratic requirement, and created risks of excessive executive discretion in public bud- geting and an extreme squander in public expenditures in the 1990s. 49. Interview with an auditor and member of Association of Court of Accounts auditors, May 2012, Ankara. Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 50. Kemal, “Zayıf Kalan Meclis,” 20–32. 51. Güler, “Kamuda Yeni denetim Sistemi,” 150. 52. Interviews with auditors, TCA, April 2012, Ankara. 53. Phone Interview with an auditor and member of Association of Court of Accounts auditors, November 2012, Berlin. 54. Interviews with auditors, TCA, April 2012, Ankara; Interview with a senior officer, Justice, Freedom and Security Unit, EU Delegation to Turkey, Septem- ber 2012, Ankara. 55. ‘Torba yasada skandal; Devlet Sayıştay denetiminden nasıl kaçırıldı?’ [Scandal in the bag law: How state is excluded from the auditing of the TCA], T24, July 6, 2012, viewed on 29 May 2016: http://t24.com.tr/yazarlar/dogan-akin/torba- yasada-skandal-devlet-sayistay-denetiminden-nasil-kacirildi.5348. 56. Interviews with auditors, TCA, April 2012, Ankara. 57. SIGMA, “The Principles,” 92. TURKISH STUDIES 455

58. Interview with a senior officer, Internal Audit Co-ordination Board, Ministry of Finance, April 2012, Ankara. 59. Ibid. 60. See note 56. 61. TESEV, “Corruption Assessment Report,” 35. 62. Interview with a council member of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Republican People’s Party (Turkish acronym, CHP), June 2012, Istanbul. 63. Transparency International. “National Integrity System Assessment,” 51. 64. Acar and Emek, “Preventing Corruption in Turkey,” 174. 65. Özel, “Differential Europe,” 746. 66. European Commission, “Turkey 2013 Progress Report,” 27. 67. Interviews with Turkey project team, ANTICORRP Project, April 2012, Ankara; Interview with a senior officer, TEPAV (Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey), May 2012, Ankara. 68. Interview with an expert on Governance Studies, TEPAV, May 2012, Ankara. 69. Emek and Acar, “Public Procurement in Infrastructure,” 91. 70. Buğra and Savaşkan, New Capitalism in Turkey, 89. 71. Interviews with experts, PPA, May 2012, Ankara; Transparency International. “National Integrity System Assessment,” 14. 72. Interviews with experts, PPA, May 2012, Ankara. 73. İmamoğlu and Rehan, “Evaluation,” 64. 74. EBRD, “Legal Transition Programme,” 9. 75. Özel, “Differential Europe,” 751. 76. Soyaltin, “Transformation of Corporate Governance,” 144.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Tanja Börzel, Paul Levin and Alexander Bürgin for their valuable comments on the earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. Downloaded by [EP- IPSWICH] at 04:48 24 August 2017 Funding This article is based on author’s PhD research, which was funded by KFG-College on Transformative Power of Europe at Freie Universität Berlin. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at IPSA World Congress in Montreal and ECPR General Con- ference in Glasgow with the funding of Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies (SUITS).

Note on contributor Digdem Soyaltin is Assistant Professor at Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Istanbul Kemerburgaz University. She obtained her PhD from the Department of Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Her main research interests are Europeanization and domestic change, comparative policy 456 D. SOYALTIN

analysis, public policy and governance, Turkish politics and more specific policies of fight against corruption. Her research articles appeared in several journals. She also has an upcoming book from Routledge, titled Europeanisation, Good Governance and Corruption in the Public Sector: The Case of Turkey.

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