Turkey fails in party funding transparency, report says

ISTANBUL

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu addresses his party’s parliamentary group meeting in this file photo. AA Photo

Turkey is “globally unsatisfactory” on the issue of the transparency of party funding, according to a report issued by the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). 

The Second Compliance Report on Turkey published by GRECO concluded that Turkey had failed to meet most previous recommendations on the issue, dealing “satisfactorily” with only four out of 17 recommendations.

“GRECO concludes that Turkey has implemented satisfactorily or dealt with in a satisfactory manner only four of the 17 recommendations contained in the Third Round Evaluation Report. Of the remaining recommendations nine have been partly implemented and four have not been implemented,” according to the report.

“Under these circumstances, GRECO has no choice but to consider the situation [on the Transparency of Party Funding theme] as ‘globally unsatisfactory,’” it added.

The report stated that Turkey had “not made any substantial and tangible progress” on the transparency of party funding, but had made some improvements in the “incriminations” issue.

“More particularly, none of the nine recommendations addressed to the country in the aforementioned area [Transparency of Party Funding] has been implemented satisfactorily or dealt with in a satisfactory manner,” the report also read.

While four recommendations in the “incriminations” area were regarded as “satisfactory,” four other recommendations were only “partly implemented.” The situation is much worse in the transparency of party funding area, where only four recommendations have been “partly implemented” and five have not been implemented at all.

The report asked the head of Turkey’s GRECO delegation to provide a report on the four “partly implemented” recommendations in the “incriminations” area, as well as on all nine recommendations in the transparency of party funding area. Such progress reports are requested of all Council of Europe members who are found not to be in compliance with recommendations contained in the mutual evaluation report.

GRECO, which comprises 48 member States and the United States, was established in 1999 by the Council of Europe to monitor states’ compliance with the organization’s anti-corruption standards.

GRECO’s objective is to improve the capacity of its members to fight corruption by monitoring their compliance with the organization’s anti-corruption standards through a process of mutual evaluation and peer pressure. GRECO also provides a platform for the sharing of best practice in the prevention and detection of corruption.