Evaluation of financial performance of banks in Turkey using critic-based EDAS-TOPSİS approach

The banking sector has a critical impact on both national and international money markets and plays a fundamental role in capital creation and the functioning of the economy. The sector has an important place in ensuring economic stability, encouraging development and supporting growth. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the financial performance of banks operating in Turkey using publicly available financial data for 2021, 2022 and 2023 and to determine the best performing banks. The methods used in the research aim to develop strategic recommendations for the Turkish financial sector by providing objective weighting of financial performance criteria and performance evaluation. Within the scope of the research, publicly available financial data of 34 banks for 2021, 35 for 2022 and 34 for 2023 were examined. The data includes multiple performance criteria such as capital adequacy, return on assets, return on equity ratios. The following methods were applied to analyze the data. The CRITIC method was used to determine the importance weights of performance criteria. This method enabled objective calculation of criterion weights by taking into account the correlation between criteria. EDAS method is a multi-criteria decision-making method that evaluates the performance of banks based on the distance to the average solution. The TOPSIS method is an evaluation method that ranks banks based on their similarity to the ideal and negative ideal solution. As a result of the analysis carried out with the CRITIC method, the deposit / asset ratio was determined as the most important criterion in 2021, 2022 and 2023, followed by the deposit volume / market share ratio. Within the scope of the analysis, the banks with the best financial performance in 2021 were determined as Ziraat Bank, Türkiye İş Bankası and Garanti Bankası, respectively. In 2022, this ranking changed to Ziraat Bank, Adabank and Türkiye İş Bankası, and in 2023, Ziraat Bankası, VakıfBank and Türkiye İş Bankası were determined as the best performing banks. These results reveal the changes in the financial performance of banks over the years and show that the evaluations made within the framework of the criteria determined by the CRITIC method form an academic basis. Research results show that the deposit/asset ratio is of critical importance in evaluating the financial performance of banks. Both EDAS and TOPSIS methods revealed that Ziraat Bank was the best performing bank in all three years in 2021, 2022 and 2023. This situation reinforces Ziraat Bank's leading position in the sector in terms of financial stability and efficiency. The study provides data to guide strategic decision-making processes in the banking sector and makes a significant contribution to understanding the competitive dynamics of the sector. Future research may enable the sector to be analyzed from a broader perspective using different periods or additional criteria.