> Singapore is one of the least corrupt countries in the world. Turkey on the other hand is rampant with corruption
I haven't lived in either, but I did live as a child under dictatorship until I was 7 years old and 1989 happened. My parents and grandparents have fresh memories of the dynamics at play in our country and did their best to explain them to me.
I do have a problem with the quoted statement.
It really depends on how you define corruption. If you define it as fraudulent behaviour by those in power, well, technically those in power do not need to behave fraudulently if they bend the law to support whatever they want to do. On paper, at some point Romania was amongst the least corrupted countries in the world. In practice, our society was rotten at its core.
Ending corruption is not the end goal in itself, corruption being a symptom of other problems in society, like the ability to live free, free to build a business, free to own stuff, free to put food on the table, free to have your own voice and your own opinions and beliefs, free to be happy. Not having corruption can either mean that the problems have been solved, or that those in power forwarded whatever agenda they wanted while crushing all opposition. This is especially doable if the country is doing well economically, such that its citizens do not have to worry about putting food on the table, or providing quality health-care to their family or whatever basic needs humans have. The true test that a form of government faces in regards to corruption is not when things are going well economically, but rather when things go awry and one thing to keep in mind is that corruption also goes bottom-up, starting with normal people closing their eyes at fraudulent behaviour of which they themselves are guilty of.
Also, I do have Turkish friends and I have visited Istanbul twice and judging by their own stories of Istanbul, by how the city evolved during my visits and by how dynamic it is, Istanbul is in my top 10 cities I'd want to live in, while Singapore is not.
I haven't lived in either, but I did live as a child under dictatorship until I was 7 years old and 1989 happened. My parents and grandparents have fresh memories of the dynamics at play in our country and did their best to explain them to me.
I do have a problem with the quoted statement.
It really depends on how you define corruption. If you define it as fraudulent behaviour by those in power, well, technically those in power do not need to behave fraudulently if they bend the law to support whatever they want to do. On paper, at some point Romania was amongst the least corrupted countries in the world. In practice, our society was rotten at its core.
Ending corruption is not the end goal in itself, corruption being a symptom of other problems in society, like the ability to live free, free to build a business, free to own stuff, free to put food on the table, free to have your own voice and your own opinions and beliefs, free to be happy. Not having corruption can either mean that the problems have been solved, or that those in power forwarded whatever agenda they wanted while crushing all opposition. This is especially doable if the country is doing well economically, such that its citizens do not have to worry about putting food on the table, or providing quality health-care to their family or whatever basic needs humans have. The true test that a form of government faces in regards to corruption is not when things are going well economically, but rather when things go awry and one thing to keep in mind is that corruption also goes bottom-up, starting with normal people closing their eyes at fraudulent behaviour of which they themselves are guilty of.
Also, I do have Turkish friends and I have visited Istanbul twice and judging by their own stories of Istanbul, by how the city evolved during my visits and by how dynamic it is, Istanbul is in my top 10 cities I'd want to live in, while Singapore is not.