The Degree of Openness in Turkey's Public Expenditure

Abstract

Openness has become an important method in public financial management and governing system. The governments that seeking to be accountable towards their citizens needs to promote their system through transparency and public participation. The governing system in Turkey under the rule of AKP has significantly changed in the last decade particularly in public financial management. This paper aims to evaluate the extent of Turkish government openness in public expenditure. It also intends to study the influence of civic society organizations and governing bodies that representing public in auditing government spending. The study found that Turkey was not successful in promoting transparency and public participation in government spending and little evidence has found to indicate major changes in Military expenditure. Therefore, some works has been done to promote current system in order to make it more open, but the way is still far to achieve complete transparency. This paper also highlighted significant role of civic society and government auditing bodies in preventing opacity and corruption and become a watchdog on the government spending.