Project name: Bridging South-South Cooperation and Emerging Donor Roles: Strengthen Turkey’s Participation in international Development Cooperation

Budget: 1.973.000.00 USD

Timeline: March 2008-March 2011

What's the situation?

Turkey is a pivotal country of technical cooperation among developing countries (TCDC), a framework of cooperation among developing countries which is recently better captured conceptually in “South-South Cooperation”.

In accordance with the current trends in global development, Turkey has begun a comprehensive rethinking of its ODA. In this sense, it is important to underline that the amount of Turkey’s ODA, rose from USD 339 million in 2004 to USD 601 million in 2005 and 714,50 million in 2006. The ratio of Turkey’s ODA to GNP rose from 0,12 percent in 2004 to 0.17 percent in 2005 and to %0,18 in 2006. Thus, Turkey achieved the target of 0.17 percent put by the European Union for the year 2010 for its 10 new member countries that joined in 2004. As it was indicated in the 2007 Annual Program of the State Planning Organization, although Turkey’s ODA has caught up the standards of a developed  country, the need for quality improvement continuous. Some improvements are observed in the coordination of Turkey’s development assistance as a result of actions taken by TİKA but further improvement on technical cooperation mechanisms is still required  in order to promote its presence in other international bodies including EU, the OECD and the Asian Development Bank.

What's UNDP’s mission?

As stated in the UNPD Strategic Plan 2008-2011, South-South has made – and continues to make – a valuable contribution to development progress and partnerships across regions. UNDP is dedicated to advancing South-South initiatives as a significant dimension of its contribution to the global partnership for development.

UNDP will step up efforts to mainstream South-South approaches by:

(a) by leveraging its network of country offices in support of South-South cooperation;

(b) by assisting programme countries in identifying, documenting and disseminating cutting-edge experiences in critical development areas, including through the establishment of a unified system and database of best practices;

(c) by encouraging the use of available institutional, technical and human resources in the South in meeting internationally agreed development goals, including the MDGs;

(d) By supporting programme countries, at their request, in developing institutional capacities to effectively manage, design and implement national South-South cooperation policies and initiatives, including through the establishment of multi-stakeholder focal points and networks at the national, regional and interregional levels; and

How is UNDP doing this?

In this third proposed phase of the TCDC Program, now designated as South-South Cooperation Program, the intervention will focus on Turkey’s Middle Income Country (MIC) status, paying special attention on the technical cooperation needs that are unique to MIC’s.

The overall objective of the project is to strengthen national capacities for the Government of Turkey as an emerging donor, though the capacity development of TİKA, as the Turkish Agency for Development. It will (I) promote the leadership of Turkey’s emerging donor role within the international development architecture, and, it will (II) contribute to the capacity development of TİKA in preparing and managing Turkey’s development assistance programs, in order to increase the effectiveness of Turkish Official Development Assistance (ODA) in line with the “Paris Declaration Principles.”

Who are our partners?

The project will be executed by Turkish International Cooperation Agency (TIKA) with the support from Ministry of Foreign Affairs and UNDP Turkey.

How will Turkey benefit?

This project will help the government of Turkey to contribute to the achievement of Millennium Development Goals to developing countries by sharing with other donors the experience and "best practices”, as an emerging donor.