Ethic codes of benefiting from public service

Regulations and academic studies on public sector ethics cover only public officials in Turkey. Regulations and codes aim to prevent public officials from engaging in unethical behavior with certain rules and limitations, relevant literature mostly focus on examining the ethical behavior of public officials in various levels of government. However, the users or clients of public services (in a broader term citizens) are also a part of a public service and possibly affect public official's ethical manner and decisions. Therefore, this study assumes that unethical behavior in public administration cannot be limited to the behavior of public officials alone. In this study, individuals who benefit from the public service as service users or stakeholders can also behave unethically. One of the aims of this study is to investigate the attitudes of service users on unethical behavior and examining the shift in attitudes depending on various independent variables. Depending on the empirical data, a code of ethics for service users for public services is proposed as a policy suggestion. The data in the study was obtained by a constructed interviewing and a survey study. In the first phase, interviews were conducted with 49 public servants in various positions from 21 different public institutions. The data obtained from these interviews were standardized and field surveys were conducted with 1,190 person who benefited from a specific local public service. The data was analyzed with the SPSS program. The results of the study show that beneficiaries of public services engage in unethical behavior and that their behavior differs significantly according to variables. The study has three sections. In the first section theoretical and conceptual framework is constructed. In this section the definition of ethics, the relationship between the other disciplines are examined. In the second section, ethics in public administration, ethical policies and practices, Turkish public administration, and legal regulations related to ethics are examined. In the third section, the subject and importance of the research, its purpose, method, data and analyses obtained from the fieldwork are given.