Professional ethics of Turkish police in the process of European Union (Sample of Police Department in Elazığ City)

Ethics means to evaluate human attitudes and behaviors as good-right or bad- wrong. Ethic codes define the general value system and aims of an organization. They also help to adapt the decisions taken in the organization into these codes to institutionalize the ethic rules in an organization. Professional ethics consists of principles that guide the members of a profession, direct them to behave correctly, limit their individual preferences, eliminate those who are insufficient, regulate the competition between the members of a profession and aim to protect the idea of performing effectively in a work environment. Today there is a general agreement that people face ethical problems in every part of the society. It was found remarking to research to what extent the police, who are responsible for security and public order of the society, act according to the principles of profession ethics. The main aim of this study is to estimate whether the policemen and policewomen working at Police Department in Elazığ city adopted, applied professional ethic codes and to disclose the ethical problems and their solutions. For that aim we tried to answer following questions. Are there any statistically significant differences between the opinions of the policemen and policewomen working at Police Department in Elazığ city center in adopting the ethic codes such as professional responsibility, professionalism, being a model person, human relations and openness to criticism, equality, justice and honesty from the points of gender, educationVI level, work experience, the place they lived before they started working as policeman or policewoman? What do the subjects of the study think about ethic codes? This is descriptive survey. An attitude scale was developed to obtain the views of the policemen and policewomen in the study. The scale which was developed after a literature survey was administered on 700 policemen and 100 policewomen working at Police Department in Elazığ city center. The data were analyzed by using SPSS 10.0 (Statistical Program for Social Sciences). According to the results of the study it was found that the policemen and policewomen have adopted the ethical codes but they sometimes infringe these rules. Key Words: Ethics, ethic education, police, police education and moral.