The Understanding of Public Service Ethics in Turkish Municipalities

Abstract

Recent legal regulations provided more authorities and resources to municipalities, meanwhile corruption and unethical conduct cases were experienced more in the municipalities in Turkey. This paper aimed to detect the “public service ethics understanding” of municipality administrators in Turkey. To this end, a questionnaire was conducted among elected and appointed administrators of 9 urban-district municipalities in Ankara. Although the majority of municipality administrators agree that institutions and legal-administrative regulations based on universal values of public service ethics rather than the personal moral values, they still keep some local moral values which tolerate corrupt and unethical conducts. This reflects the dilemma of the Turkish administrators on this issue. Therefore, hard (like institutional and legal-administrative regulations) and soft (like training and cultural change) measures of public service ethics should go hand in hand in order to minimize the gap between the “good perceptions” and “widespread malpractices” of municipality administrators.