ANALYZING THE INTEGRATION OF SUSTAINABILITY REPORTS OF THE BANKING SECTOR IN TERMS OF THREE DIMENSIONS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

This study investigates the integration of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the banking sector. For this purpose, the annual and integrated sustainability reports of the 100 banks were examined, covering the years 2015 and 2022. In the study, the analysis of the SDG reports was conducted in terms of the three fundamental dimensions of sustainability: economic, social, and environmental, using the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach. At the same time, the study, which employs natural language processing (NLP) and text analysis techniques, focuses on the reporting trends of public and private banks, revealing the differences between the two types of banks in terms of sustainable integrated reports. In terms of social and environmental dimensions, public banks use SDG targets at a higher level in their reports; however, when viewed from an economic dimension, it has been concluded that there is no significant difference between public and private banks in sustainability reporting. When all the findings are evaluated, it is believed that the frameworks for sustainability reporting in the banking sector, developing policies about reports, and following technological innovations will make reporting practices faster and more accurate. At the same time, the banks' significantly increasing contributions to achieving the SDG goals in recent years is also a remarkably noteworthy point of value. All these results are seen as valuable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and literature interested in sustainable development goals and the close relationship with the banking sector in recent years.