Journalist Timur Soykan granted transparency award

* Photo taken from the 5th Transparency Awards

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The winners of this year's Transparency Awards have been announced.

Granted by the Transparency International for the 7th time this year, the 2021 Transparency Awards have been granted to the Ankara Branch of the Chamber of Architects, journalist Timur Soykan and Faruk Çebi.

In the category of institutions, the award has been given to the Ankara Branch of the Chamber of Architects, which assumes an important role in the urban struggle for the good of the public and society.

In the media category, the award has been granted to journalist Timur Soykan, whom the association has introduced as follows:

"He is one of the rare people who bravely work on the mafia-politics-state triangle in Turkey and practice the profession of investigative journalism, which is becoming more and more difficult.

"He keeps on enlightening the public about issues such as corruption, organized crime groups and fraud."

In the category of citizens/ civilian initiatives, Faruk Çebi has been granted the award. In announcing the awards, Transparency International has defined him as "a bureaucrat who devoted himself to the protection of nature and was at times attacked during his advocacy".

Çebi wrote a book about how bureaucrats, who are supposed to work for the public good, are turned into "BÜROKRANTs" (an amalgamation of bureaucrat and unearned income in Turkish) by which interest groups.

Who is granted the awards?

Transparency Awards are granted with the aim of supporting works and efforts against corruption, popularizing the principles of good governance such as transparency, honesty and accountability and supporting individual or institutional actions and initiatives in this context.

The 7th Transparency Award-Giving Ceremony will be held in İstanbul on December 9 (today) International Anti-Corruption Day. (HA/SD)