Türkiyede Kurumsal Yönetim: Genel Bir Değerlendirme

Şirketlerin yönetiminde gözlemlenen başarısızlık ve suiistimallerin, yaşanan finansal krizlerde ya tetikleyici ya da derinleştirici rol oynamasınedeniyle kurumsal yönetim, son zamanlarda sıkça tartışılan bir konu haline gelmiştir. Bu çalışmada, şeffaflık, hesap verebilirlik, adillik ve sorumluluk gibi temel ilkeler çerçevesinde şirket ile ilgili tüm çıkar gruplarının menfaatlerinin gözetildiği bir yönetim sistemini ortaya koyan kurumsal yönetim anlayışının OECD’nin en hızlıbüyüyen ekonomileri arasında yer alan Türkiye’de, benimsenmesine ve gelişmesine dönük yapılan faaliyetler incelenmektedir. Çalışmada öncelikle Türkiye’nin makro ekonomik durumu ve bunun kurumsal yönetim ilkelerinin uygulanmasına etkileri ele alınmakta, ayrıca OECD’nin belirlediği kurumsal yönetim ilkeleri çerçevesinde Türkiye’de yapılan yasal düzenlemeler ve SPK Kurumsal Yönetim İlkeleri hakkında bilgi verilmektedir. Özellikle Türk Ticaret Kanunu Tasarısı’nın yasalaşmasının, Türkiye’de faaliyet gösteren şirketlerin kurumsal yönetim uygulama düzeylerinin yükselmesine katkısağlayacağıdüşünülmektedir.

Recently, corporate governance has become a frequently discussed subject considering failure and misconduct in governance of corporations have played a triggering and deepening role in financial crises encountered. In this study, activities carried out for the corporate governance mentality, which suggests a governance system that observes all interest groups related to the corporation within the framework of basic principles such as transparency, accountability, fairness and responsibility, to be adopted and developed in Turkey are reviewed. Firstly, macro economical situation of Turkey and effects of applying this to corporate governance principles are being discussed in the study. According to this, the government has played an effective role in economy in Turkey until 1980s. At the beginning of 1980s, policies to minimize government intervention have begun. The bottom line of these policies were based more on export, private sector and competition, oriented for free market conditions and incentive for foreign capital to be implemented instead of import substitutional politics. Inflation rate generally being above 60%, real interest rate being over 30% during the 1990s and average economical growth being relatively low have made the economical conditions hard for the companies acting in Turkey. Macro-economical instability resulting from high inflation and interest rates has made financial-industrial group companies in Turkey to become widespread. Owners of corporations have organized their businesses separately in order to distribute their risks and that has caused for the effective executive control of the corporate group at the controlling corporation level to concentrate among one or a few shareholders. As a result of this, cross-ownership, controlling minority structure and priviliged ownership structures have become widespread in Turkey. Besides, instable tax management has pushed the companies to off-record applications to hide the profits. Responding to these problems which stem from economic crisis of 2000-2001, the Turkish authorities implemented a bank restructuring programme as well as regulatory reforms.Effective audit implementations have been realized and standards for internal control and risk management have been increased. Besides, reforms in banking law including advanced corporate governance standards and limitations about lending have come into effect in November 2005. As a result of the reforms that have been made consumer price index which was 54% in 2001 decreased to 10.44% in 2008 and GDP growth which was approximately 7.5% in 2001 has increased at an average of 7.1% each year. Today, Turkish economy is one of fastest growing economies in the OECD. As it known, corporate governance has come to the agenda with the Cadbury Report for the first time in Europe. Following Asian Crisis in 1997 and corporate scandals in the 2000s such as Enron and WordCom, many countries have published principles in terms developing corporate governance mentality. By taking reference the OECD Corporate Governance Principles, which was published in 1999 for the first time and then drawn up in 2004 after being reviewed, the Capital Markets Board of Turkey CMB published its Corporate Governance Principles in 2003 with the aim of developing corporate governance applications and integrating Turkish capital market to the global markets and then finalized them in 2005 by reviewing those principles. Generally, corporate governance principles determined by the OECD are being gathered under six titles as “ensuring the basis of an effective corporate governance framework”, “the rights of shareholders and key ownership functions”, “the equitable treatment of shareholders” “the role of stakeholders in corporate governance”, “public disclosure and transparency” and “ the responsibilities of the board”. The CMB’s corporate governance principles consist of titles such as “shareholders”, “public disclosure and transparency”, “stakeholders” and “the board of directors”. There is no obligation for implementation of the CMB’s Corporate Governance Principles. However, the corporations have to state whether they comply with these principles or not. The OECD corporate governance principles are the cornerstones of corporate governance principles in Turkey as in many other countries. For this reason, in this study, corporate governance principles determined in Turkey by the CMB and the activities for putting these principles into practice will be discussed after drawing a general framework with corporate governance principles determined by the OECD. Also, the regulations regarding the corporate governance mentality in the Turkish Commercial Code Draft TCCD will be discussed. Other than the CMB principles, different studies are being made to contribute to the development of corporate governance mentality in Turkey. The regulations regarding the corporate governance rating which makes the corporate governance principles implementation levels of the companies to be determined by a standard and comparable measurement system, the ISE Corporate Governance Index established to contribute the corporate governance implementations to settle in Turkey and to encourage the companies acting responsibly about this issue and The Corporate Governance Association of Turkey CGAT , which has adopted the mission of being the guide for the corporate governance to be settled and implemented correctly in the companies in Turkey, may be considered among these. When we generally evaluate implementation of corporate governance principles in Turkey, we reached the finding which is still 554 public companies in Turkey and 326 of them are traded on the ISE while the shares of 228 of them are not traded on the ISE. If we are to remember that Corporate Governance Index has 25 companies, it will be seen that only 8% of the companies traded on the ISE has a corporate governance rating of 6 or more. This situation may be interpreted as the CMB principles published in Turkey generally complies with the OECD principles but the companies are not so eager or conscious about the implementation of these principles. This may be a result of the fact that the CMB principles are not based on a legal obligation. This situation brings to mind La Porta et al.’s study in which it is stated that “the companies with weak legal systems have the least developed capital markets”. When the findings of the study are considered within this framework, it can be concluded that it is necessary to secure these basic principles legallyand not to leave the implementation of basic corporate governance principles to the initiative of the companies for having an advanced and reliable capital market. Within this context, it is expected for the Turkish Commercial Code Draft to establish a legal system within which the basic corporate governance principles are concretized. It is considered that the enactment of Turkish Commercial Code Draft will contribute to the increase of corporate governance principles implementation levels of the companies in Turkey