By Robert Ellis, September 22 2008<\/p>\n
Corruption in Turkey is endemic, stretching back to the Ottoman empire in the sixteenth century, but it was not until the liberalization of the Turkish economy in the 1980\u2019s under Turgut \u00d6zal it took on a new dimension. \u00d6zal\u2019s remark, \u201cMy civil servants know how to take care of business\u201d, has become apocryphal, but there was a lift-off in the 1990\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Tansu Ciller, who became Turkey\u2019s first female prime minister in 1993, bowed out in style three years later, when she issued an order for the release of 500 billion Turkish lira ($6.5 million) from the state slush fund for \u201csecret service expenses\u201d, and a convoy of lorries travelled round Ankara at the dead of night to collect the cash from various banks. A parliamentary majority later acquitted her of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Bertolt Brecht\u2019s conclusion, \u201cRobbing a bank\u2019s no crime compared to owning one\u201d, took on a new take in Turkey under Mesut Yilmaz, who became premier three times from 1991 to 1999. With the right political support it was possible to open a bank and siphon off the liquidity, but with the financial crisis of 2001 21 banks were taken into receivership with a cost to the state of $60 billion.<\/p>\n
The Great Turkish Rip-off | EuropeNews<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Robert Ellis, September 22 2008 Corruption in Turkey is endemic, stretching back to the Ottoman empire in the sixteenth century, but it was not until the liberalization of the Turkish economy in the 1980\u2019s under Turgut \u00d6zal it took on a new dimension. \u00d6zal\u2019s remark, \u201cMy civil servants know how to take care of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":32650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}