The concept of public interest in privatization

Nowadays, the applications of privatization are frequently being implemented and privatization has been incorporated within economic and social policy settings of many countries over the globe. Those aspects have turned privatization into an issue that can be discussed from different point of views. Accordingly, in this study privatization applications have been examined from the perspective of public interest. First, it has been tried to explain the notion of public interest and subsequently, the questions of how public interest can be achieved in the context of privatization and which criteria for public interest should be followed, have been tried to be answered. Meanwhile, most of the legal arrangements made from past to today have been chronologically investigated and the concept of privatization and public interest is explained on the basis of those inspections.Although the concept of public interest does not have a concrete definition, it is possible to explain it as a notion related to the needs of public that compensates the society?s common welfare laws and forms the ultimate objective of every kind of action and operation taken by administration. Since the implementation of privatization is an administrative procedure, the requirement of taking public interest into consideration within this application is definite. In broadest terms, privatization refers to the transfer of state?s assets and the management & ownership of the activities performed by the state to private sector. Along with this definition, some object due to the belief that privatization would have unfavourable effects on social life and the country?s independence, whereas there are some opinions that favour privatization owing to the justifications that free market mechanism is more efficient than the public sector and social state should not intervene in economic area.In privatization, as in every administrative process, the main objective is public interest. Hence, whether public interest would be achieved or not in privatization applications and which methods should be chosen from the point of view of public interest need to be enlightened. As mentioned in the Act for Privatization Applications, the fundamental purpose of privatization is to provide efficiency augmentation in the economy together with a decrease in public expenditure. Accordingly, in this study it is concluded that the above criteria are solely not sufficient for reaching public interest and privatization implementations should also be taken into consideration from the perspectives of employment, efficiency, assignment of public service and the circumstances of strategic matters and organisations.On account of the idea that all the points mentioned above should be investigated through a privatization sample that is a subject for most of the debates in current agenda, the privatization of TUPRAS is chosen as the sample case for this study and by taking also the related law court verdicts into account, it has been tried to explain the consequences of privatization from viewpoint of public interest and how public interest should be considered within privatization context using the case study in question.Key Words1.Privatization2.Public Interest3.Public Service4.Court Decisions5.TUPRAS