The ’Bahsish’ culture

If the minister in charge as well as the director general of that government office appear in front of cameras and defend a group of land registry senior officials accused of getting bribe with a, "They did nothing wrong ... People happy about buying a new house or some land might offer land registry officials some ’bahsish’ or tips. Receiving a tip is not a crime!" mentality and if a court of this country agrees that the land registry officials received tips, not bribes, thus committed no crime, it will never ever be possible to have success in the fight against bribery in this country. It did not even make it onto the front pages of newspapers last week when the Ankara Police Department launched an operation on the Sincan Land Registry Office and arrested scores of officials on charges that they have established a gang and were systematically robbing citizens who buy or sell property in the Sincan area. According to claims the allegedly corrupt officials were intentionally creating problems for the citizens, delaying completion of their work and thus forcing citizens to pay bribes or increase the number of bribes they offered.

Accordingly, at one point the director and his assistant discovered the secret cameras; first they attempted to uninstall them but later restricted themselves with redirecting the cameras to some empty desks only, assuming that cameras did not record voices as well. In their recorded conversations the director was reportedly stressing that even though he and some of his staff might be detained and brought to court he was confident that as happened to the personnel of the Keçiören Land Registry Office they all would eventually be released and compensated for the time under detention or arrest.

Indeed, under the current perceptional reality in Turkey, the police operation was a futile effort if it was part of a drive to wipe out bribery in this country. At a time when people documented of receiving bribes were set free by courts on grounds that what they received was a tip not bribe; if the political administration of the country is engaged in election bribing, distributing from coal to refrigerators, dishwashers to food coupons to citizens with the pretext of conforming with both the social state stipulation of the Constitution and the alms offering tradition of cultural Islam, why did police think that the Sincan Land Registry Office personnel was violating the laws by accepting "tips" or "bahsish" offered by "happy citizens"?

If we can’t stop it, let’s enjoy it

The Keçiören case is now at the Court of Appeals. It will take months for the court to finalize the Sincan case. We cannot vouch from now whether the appeals court will uphold the verdict of the Keçören case and help institutionalize bribery or whether the court will make a different verdict in the Sincan case.

Whatever the eventual outcome might be, it is obvious that as long as the government of this country believes in the merit of nourishing a beggar society; as long as we have judges who, under what influence we cannot say (because of a possible heavy penalty under the contentious Penal Code Article 301 on charges of insulting the Turkish judiciary), can mix up a bribe with a tip or "bahsish," can it be possible for anyone to think that bribery is a crime in this country? Or, is it possible to assume that a fight against bribery may succeed in this country?

Perhaps it is wiser to accept the reality as it is; stop pretending to be something different than what we actually are; accept that we have become a "beggar state" and a "beggar society" and place "bahsish" or tip boxes at government offices.

We may establish as well rules of how to share the money collected in the tip box and thus achieve at least a fair share of the bounty among out civil servants. Since we cannot stop it, it will be good to legitimize and institutionalize bribery.