Turkish politics needs to be transparent for healthy polls

A report prepared by the Checks and Balances Network is shedding light on the untold part of the Turkish election system A report prepared by the Checks and Balances Network (Denge ve Denetleme A??) under the title of ?Financing the politics and election campaign: Competition, Transparency and Accountability? is shedding light on the untold part of the Turkish election system and, in general, its politics. Written by Professor Ömer Faruk Gençkaya from Marmara University, the report aims at launching a debate on the issue of financing politics as its foreword notes that problems with regard to this issue have negative impacts on political and economic systems.

One of the fundamental problems standing in the way of bringing about transparency and accountability to elections is the fact that there is no law regulating the financing of parliamentary and municipal elections even though it?s a constitutional obligation. 

?This issue of financing politics reached an imponderable dimension,? Gençkaya told a narrow group of journalists on May 22 as he outlined the details of his report. ?This report is not aiming to criticize the government and political parties but to guide them,? he said, adding that Turkey should immediately deal with the issue after the June 7 polls and address the shortcomings.

One of the findings Gençkaya underlined is that the unrecorded financing of politics has been in sharp increase, especially in election years. ?The unrecorded inflow of foreign currency has been on a remarkable increase since the 2011 elections. The law on the repatriation of capital that was passed in 2013 has turned this nature of the unregistered economy into a systemic problem. The inflow and exit of money can hardly be registered,?...