There are some words that are thought to be old, but carry the most vital need of today. “Murakabe” one of them. Today “audit” But oversight means something broader: surveillance, control, accountability and accountability. And most importantly: knowing the limits of power.
Because if the law works well in a country, people trust the rules. If the law works badly, people turn to power. Then what is being talked about “right” It won't happen; “who is strong” becomes. And the most dangerous sentence settles in a society: “Being right is not enough.” When this sentence spreads, the order starts to change. People look at relationship not merit, proximity not labor, person not rule. Silence seems safe. Staying close to the powerful becomes a kind of insurance.
This is where supervision comes into play. But auditing is often misunderstood in our country. Audit is mistaken for a report. The inspector comes, writes a report and the file is closed. However, an audit is not a report, it is a result. If the audit does not produce results, it either does not exist or is pretended to exist.
A real audit is a chain: find a finding, identify the responsible party, set a deadline, impose sanctions, follow up. If one of these links is missing, the system learns that: “Go on.” This is how decay begins. Not with big scandals. With small repetitions.
The first condition for supervision is independence. If the auditor is in the shadow of the power he or she audits, there is no audit; there is silence. The second condition is transparency. What cannot be seen cannot be audited. If the tender is in the dark, if the appointment is unmeasured, if the contracts are secret, this is lobbying, not auditing.
The bigger the backstage, the smaller the institutions. The third condition is data and digital trace, the language of the modern age. Today, arbitrariness is hidden not in a decision, but in recurring patterns: the same names keep rising, the same files keep getting shelved, the same circle keeps winning... These are not coincidences, they are system behavior. And system behavior is captured by data.
The fourth condition is the most critical: not the size of the punishment, but its certainty. People in a country “he gets away with it” the sense of justice collapses. When the sense of justice collapses, society does not stand on the side of the right; it stands on the side of the powerful. Because everyone tries to protect themselves.
And how can this order be established? Not with good intentions, but with architecture. It is built by fragmenting power: decision-makers and implementers, implementers and auditors, auditors and the judiciary will not be in the same hands. Audit institutions will be insurance, not ornaments; their terms of office will be fixed, their budgets will be independent, the auditor will not be afraid of the person he or she audits.
The audit will not end with writing a report; it will be the end of the report. If there is a finding, there will be a conclusion. Transparency will be a necessity, not a choice. The digital trail will work as a barrier against arbitrariness. Penalties will not be negotiable. Because oversight cannot live with bargaining.
Uğur Mumcu told this truth in one sentence: “Those who favor the powerful rather than the righteous are cowardly and slippery. As the center of power shifts, they turn and eventually become pinwheels.” What we call Murakabe is the name of stopping this whirligig.