25 MAY ETHICS DAY MESSAGE FROM EGEMEN BAGIS

Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis delivered a written message on the occasion of the 25th May, Ethics Day.

In his message, Minister for EU Affairs Bagis noted the following:

Ethical values are indispensable for an efficiently functioning democracy. It is unavoidable that not adhering to ethical principles will bring forth misconduct in administration and loss of confidence.

This will be understood more clearly when one considers the role played by the institutions and executives that don’t perform their duties in conformity with the ethical principles in the rise of the global economic crisis, especially in European countries. The crisis which gave rise to important social problems and political crises considerably shook confidence in the line management and made the ‘confidence deficit’ issue the most important problem of the public administration.

Our country, which got through the global economic crisis with the least damage and preserved its economic stability, has recently become exemplary for many European countries with its concept of ethical administrative conduct in the public administration. Code of ethics applied in all of our public institutions and organisations with sensitivity has certainly played an extremely important role in the prevention of the misuse of our public resources. Turning into the symbol of an honest and moral administrative conduct grounded on providing service to its people, Turkey, under the leadership of our Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has also been a source of inspiration for the people of nearby countries who rebel against unethical administrative conduct.

Our country, which went through a rapid restructuring process in the last 11 years, also took important steps for ethical values to take root in public administration and it strengthened both its legal and institutional infrastructure.

Ethical values, which are the capital stocks of a society and state, are elements which the society and its embodiment, the public institutions, can develop and internalize only within themselves and which can’t be borrowed, substituted and imported from the outside. As our Prime Minister also noted, the deep-rooted historical heritage we have is full of distinctive examples which will light the way for us. We are determined to bring these forth to contribute to the development and implementation of ethical values in public administration which will be accepted at the universal level. At this point, Sheikh Edebali’s motto, “Value the human so the state is exalted” is the basic ideal of our Government. We believe that the European Union accession process also makes a significant contribution in this context.

Internalization and functioning of ethical values are closely related to the development of ethical culture at the societal and institutional level. I hope that Ethics Day and Ethics Week create awareness towards ethical consciousness at a larger scale in the world and I stress that, as the Government, we will remain committed to this as we did up until now.