Abstract

Together with the impact of globalization, the crises occurred in recent years have affected all financial sectors including particularly banking industry. The issues such as strengthening the financial structure, to insure stabilizations in their balance sheets and management of risks have become essential for the banks so that they will not be affected from crises to be occurred or minimize any possible effect.

The measures and implementations required to be applied so that the banks will have robust and stabilized structure and be affected from the risks to the minimum extent, led the conduct of the international studies and setting of the international standards. With the establishment of Bank forInternational Settlements in 1930, it was attempted to set standards for and develop banking and finance sectors. Established in 1974, Basel Committee on Banking Supervision under the Bank for International Settlements, attempted to set international standards in the areas such as capital adequacy and risk management, with the objective of insuring banks to comply with such standards at optimum level.

Although there are many regulations published by Basel Committee in order to form standards for banking sector and settle the banks on strong foundations, the most notable ones known to the public are Basel I, Basel II and Basel III Criteria.