HAVE WE REALLY BEEN USING THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REPORTING STANDARDS (IFRS) SINCE 2005? CASE OF TURKEY

• Main Authors: Melissa N. Cagle, Çağnur Balsarı, Fatih Dalkılıç
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Social Sciences Research Society 2015-01-01
• Series: International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanity Studies
• Online Access: http://www.sobiad.org/ejournals/journal_IJSS/arhieves/IJSS-2015_1/cagle.pdf

Starting from the year 2002, the Turkish national regulatory agency hasundertaken an extensive role in the convergence efforts towards IFRS. In order tosupport the transition, the Turkish Capital Markets Board (TCMB) implementedseveralversionsof IFRS,regulatory practices and compliance requirements- allover the course of 15 years. The first effort undertaken in the road to IFRStransition was the issuance of Series XI, No: 25 by the TCMB. However, SeriesXI, No: 25 was not fully compatible with the international standard set and SeriesXI, No: 27 was put into effect in order to allow the companies to refer to theoriginal IFRS when necessary. This has created three groups of reportingcompanies; Series XI, no: 25 users, IAS/IFRS users and mixed usersof both sets.Nobes (2006) states that there is a risk that the process of translation will changeor lose meaning from the original version of the standard and as these variousIFRS are given legal status in various countries, this approach can potentially leadto application differences between jurisdictions. In line with this argument, theaim of the current study is to discuss impact of these differences on financialreport comparability and analysis in Turkey.