ANALYSIS OF THE “MISSING TRILLION?!” CASE PROCESS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF FINANCIAL AUDIT OF POLITICAL PARTIES

In the Turkish political system, the task of financial uadit of political parties is carried out by the Constitutional Court. The performance of the Constitutional Court in fulfilling this duty has been rightly criticized in the context of decision making times and propriety control. The legislator responded to the "activist" financial audit perspective put forward by the Constitutional Court with the Law No. 6111 adopted in 2011. Despite all these criticisms, the practice of financial audit of political parties put forward by the Constitutional Court has never reached a level that would eliminate the exercise of political rights. At least, this situation points to the legitimacy of the financial audit of political parties being carried out by the Constitutional Court, an institution that can be considered relatively impartial. Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) was closed by the Constitutional Court on January 16, 1998. The process, which started with the audit of the 1997 final accounts of the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) by the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Finance based on a general directorate "notification" published on February 18, 1998, and continued under the political climate of February 28, was examined from a legal perspective in the study. In this context, the attitude of the Constitutional Court, the criminal and civil case process, the conviction and the special amnesty decision were examined before the case process, which was called the "Lost Trillion Case" by the media of the period.