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THE OMBUDSMAN INSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF TÜRKİYE

The Concept of Good Administration and The Role of the Ombudsman
Institution regarding the Principles of Good Administration

The concept of good administration has a large area of use falling within the scope of
many disciplines such as public administration, political science, business administration
and law and adopted by the public, private and civil society sectors with its different
aspects. Started to be used as legal audit standard towards the end of 1990s, the concept
of good administration refers, in the most general sense, to compliance with specific
procedures, principles and norms in order to carry out a certain activity.
The concept of good administration has been recognised only recently as a right as
well as an administrative and legal audit standard. However, it can be stated that the
intellectual and historical foundations of the good administration are as old as the
emergence of the concepts of power and administration. A report prepared by the
Venice Commission states that the “good administration was expressed by Aristotle as
the following: “Moral responsibility was viewed as originating with the moral agent as
decision-maker.”

In history, some principles and rules of good administration are found in the times
of Sumerians, Ancient Egypt, Persian Empires, Ancient China and India, Greek and
Roman civilizations, even civilizations of Aztec, Inca and Maya. Therefore, the basis of
many of the principles and rules discussed in the context of good administration dates
to pre-modern state era. In particular, a regime in conformity with such principles as
lawfulness, equality, impartiality and honesty was demanded by those who were ruled
by the public administration and voiced by the political philosophers.
The proliferation of the Ombudsman Institutions and particularly the efforts of the
European Ombudsman, which started its operations in 1995, to regulate the good
administrative behaviours for the EU Institutions, made the principles of the good
administration possible to be developed as a legal and administrative auditing standard.

After the Ombudsman Institution of Türkiye started to receive applications for
complaints, a new era started in Türkiye, in which the principles of good administration
would be referred to as the legal and administrative auditing standards.

A number of positive developments have been recorded in the field of good
administration in the recent years both in Türkiye and across the World. With a view to
adoption of the understanding of the good administration, rules have been established
in many legal texts, new institutions have been established, and existing institutions
have been restructured in line with the new developments.

As per the Law on the Ombudsman No. 6328, the Ombudsman Institution, which is
a constitutional public entity, is in charge of examining, investigating, and submitting
recommendations concerning all sorts of acts and actions as well as attitudes and
behaviours of the administration within the framework of an understanding of human

42 2019 ANNUAL REPORT