PodcastDavutoğlu stresses need for new Public Procurement Law due to favoritism in contract award processes
Future Party leader Ahmet Davutoğlu has said that during his term as prime minister, he attempted to have the Public Procurement Law changed to promote transparency and to halt cronyism and favoritism, but his efforts turned futile. "In the absence of democracy, oligarchies form. In Turkey, public resources are channeled to only certain fractions of society,” Davutoğlu said.
Duvar English
Future Party leader and former prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has said that he attempted to have the Public Procurement Law changed during his term as prime minister, but his efforts turned futile.
Davutoğlu emphasized that public procurement contract award processes need to be held in "a transparent" mechanism due to widespread cronyism and favoritism.
“In the second and third month of my duty [as prime minister], my target was to have Development Plan Law, Political Ethics Law and Public Procurement Law changed. I was especially going to intervene in the Procurement Law directly, not to distribute [public resources] to 'here and there' like is the case now, but for the process to be held transparently, because I was seeing what was happening in the tenders,” Davutoğlu was quoted as saying by news website T24's Murat Sabuncu on June 15.
Davutoğlu made the comments during a meeting held with reporters to address the issues concerning Turkey's economy.
Davutoğlu quit the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) last year and founded the Future Party. Davutoğlu became prime minister in 2014 but fell out with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan two years later.
One of the important most structural problems Turkey currently faces is “corruption and waste of public resources,” Davutoğlu told reporters. He said that public resources are being channeled to “only certain” people.
“I am always saying that in the absence of democracy, oligarchies form. In Turkey, resources are channeled to only certain fractions [of society],” he said.
Davutoğlu said that during his term as prime minister, he also challenged the government's move to provide tax exemptions to the Russian-owned JSC Akkuyu Nuclear firm, which is building the Akkuyu nuclear power plant in Turkey's southern province of Mersin.
“Another of my intervention was for Akkuyu nuclear power plant. Due to the newly forged ties with Russia, [the company building] Akkuyu [nuclear power plant] was granted tax deductions, without getting anything in return. This had a serious cost on the economy,” Davutoğlu said, adding that his efforts regarding this issue had also turned futile.