I've deleted and rewritten this piece many times, as it's actually a very difficult topic. When describing things that affect us, we inevitably include our emotions. And corruption is something we all believe affects us the most.
I prefer to approach the state as a system. You can think of it like a computer program. Every computer program has goals, purposes, and methods it uses to achieve those purposes. The state contains the same things, but there's a difference: programs represent a process. When you run an application, you actually start a process. States don't really have continuity. Because they don't create a process - they control the process we call society. Yes, society is a process, and the state is a higher system that controls that process.
I should define a system as follows: a system is the connection itself that links multiple things together. For the undefined "things" to exist together efficiently, they must be integrated with each other and different working areas must function. Job descriptions are made, and as a result of these job descriptions, countless unconnected things reach a system.
So we can examine the "things" that could include everything conceivable (since they're undefined) in two groups: "Primitive things" that don't connect to anything else and contain meaning on their own, and "Systemic things" that create a whole system by connecting with other things. I want "things" to remain as primitive as possible and create function on their own. Because when utilizing them, they don't require dependency on other things and become understandable on their own.
The human mind is actually an abnormality. This isn't a very creative thing. However, the human mind tries to systematize things, taking existence away from processing itself independently. This got too abstract. Let me explain it this way: when humans try to understand nature, they complicate everything so much that in the end they can't understand nature as it is. At the simplest level, we can't even love a cat like a cat. The being we call a cat has a very simple goal: instinctual security. But when we love the cat, we chat with it, expect it to understand, some even think they have a spiritual connection with their cat. A cat is a cat, it stands there, it already has meaning on its own.
The structure we call the state is also a system established with the concern of making everything efficient, manipulating nature. Even when presenting us with what's natural, it puts nature into another form. It tries to clarify everything as if drawn with a ruler all at once. However, while clarifying, it also puts it into a form that the human mind can understand. That is, it transforms it into being comprehensible.
I think Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" is my favorite book because of this. It very clearly explains what the state's purpose is. It very clearly writes how it forces everything to be definite, clear, predictable. Dystopian culture already addresses this. Brave New World, the second most well-known dystopia, again focuses on the system itself and tells how it will destroy man even while determining the best for himself. However, people lacking systematic thinking, instead of understanding the impact of these two works, praise 1984. Sorry friends, 1984 and the so-called dystopias derived from it describe the connection between the ruling system and individual emotions in describing the system. That is, 1984 is a different treatment of the archetype of maturation, emerging from childhood.
Yevgeny Zamyatin makes two definitions - entropy and power - when describing the peak point the human mind wants to reach. Entropy is the state that occurs after reaching the goal. Power dissipates, the human spirit becomes enslaved, no crack remains to break the system. Power is what destroys entropy and creates new entropy. He treats the effect of power more primitively, and the effect of entropy closer to civilization. This is very close to what I want to discuss, and I'll borrow the concept of entropy from here.
As entropy increases, that is, as the resistance preventing "things" from being together disappears, the system becomes stronger and on the other hand becomes uncontrollable. Because no power remains to control and question it. Notice how brave people were in the early years of the republic, then how people's courage disappeared as the republic progressed as a process. The state has strengthened in attacks and has come to dictate how people should think. People don't ask "Why? For what? For what purpose?" - they tend to accept.
Today's Turkish democracy is at a very strange point. There are two sides aimed at increasing state pressure, and the ideology that both sides claim to defend already consists of two views that built the Republic of Turkey: Kemalism and Islamism. Both sides favor changing the existing state by making minimal changes to its structure rather than reforming it.
By the way, the ultimate point of states' future is this strange point where Turkey finds itself. Sorry, you can't convince me by showing European countries that are not under physical and diplomatic pressure. All states, including the USA, manipulate people's thoughts and are constantly trying to make their existence accepted.
In cases where the upper system doesn't change and transform, the processes controlled by the upper system tend toward corruption. Because unquestionable power is always prone to becoming an instrument. Because every system is designed, and the limits of the human mind can calculate only to a point. Even if you design an artificial intelligence that only thinks about how society should be governed, its calculation will be insufficient against nature's infinite possibilities. Therefore, designs should be rebuilt according to the conditions and goals of that moment, redesigned without falling into the delusion of manipulating to understand nature.
We believe democracies can rebuild these designs. However, as you can see, in our current situation, democracy is not supporting this rebuilding process. Because the structure we call society has no will - it's mechanical.
Naturally, as systems remain fixed, parties emerge that benefit from the gaps in those systems and aim to continue their flaws because they benefit from them. Thus will completely disappears, lack of will is glorified. (I'm not saying this so people can make unconscious speeches. I mean the designing mind.) In terms of the state system, we call this corruption - that is, using the tools systematized by the state for individual benefit rather than social benefit.
If you have a one percent chance of dying in a day, it means you'll die within a hundred days. Statistics work this way - if you consistently hit the ninety-nine percent probability, that statistic is already wrong and means zero percent. If a system has even less than one percent probability of abuse, that system would eventually be abused. This is what evolution theory is based on. Even if the probability of life emerging is one in a billion, eventually life will emerge within such a vast timespan.
I think of the first stage of corruption as systematically attributing recurring flaws to individuals. For example, poverty is not a general problem, it's your problem. Individuals internalize this. The second stage is attributing problems not to the entire society but to a group. The final stage is the unquestionability, absolute dominance of those who benefit from corruption. That is, the state system is transformed into a system that works for the benefit of a small mass. These stages can exist together, but their emergence happens sequentially.
So corruption is the discovery of cracks in a continuously running system and making this permanent. Unless systems correct themselves, they create corrupt systems themselves.