A Content Analysis of the Audit (Regularity) Reports with Regards to the Turkish Court of Accounts’ Audit Findings: State Universities 2013–2018

Abstract

The Turkish Court of Accounts’ regularity reports released after the audits of the public universities conducted in 2012–2018 covering 87% of them in total (103 public universities in 2012 and 129 in 2018) were examined in terms of their compliance with the international audit standards set by INTOSAI. No university name is mentioned in the report. Our goal is to understand the audit findings and draw university administrators’ attention to the findings. Although the Turkish Court of Accounts classified its audit findings as “affecting the audit opinion” and “not affecting the audit opinion”, the audit opinion did not change, which does not match the INTOSAI international audit standards. The Turkish Court of Accounts neither gave an adverse audit opinion nor issued a disclaimer of opinion. The Turkish Court of Accounts is observed to audit the public universities on a continuous basis and at a high rate. In line with the international audit standards, the audit reports were found to require a qualified opinion of 50.7% and an unqualified (positive) opinion of 49.3%. Especially in 2017, 76.2% of the institutions should have been given qualified audit reports. On average, 69.37% of the audited institutions had findings that did not affect the audit opinion, and 49.81% had findings that affected the audit opinion. Some of the audit findings fit in with the description of fraud. The findings that may fall within the scope of error and fraud are not even classified. The number of institutions with audit findings has increased over the years, which reveals that neither the findings are understood properly nor the due attention is paid to them. It was determined that the regularity audit reports do not comply with the continuity, consistency and full disclosure principles, among the fundamental principles of accounting. The fact that the Turkish Court of Accounts shares all audit reports with the public is an indicator of its transparency and impartiality. The Turkish Court of Accounts performs an important task on behalf of Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM), and it is an institution that everyone needs. The Turkish Court of Accounts should not be weakened. However, the Court must distinguish between classification, consistency, error and fraud, and to reflect its opinion accordingly. It must also follow the INTOSAI audit opinion standards.