Reports - United Nations Development Programme

COUNTRY EVALUATION: ASSESSMENT OF DEVELOPMENT RESULTS – TURKEY
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Turkey’s preparatory work for the 2002 Johannesburg
Sustainable Development Summit and through the
administration of the Global Environment Facility
(GEF) Small Grants Programme. The UNDP’s
support was instrumental in achieving Turkey’s
ratification of the Climate Change Convention.
Gender: Despite some significant achievements
since the creation of the Turkish Republic, gender
disparities have remained significant in Turkey into
the 21st Century. Over the last ten years, the UNDP
has contributed to increasing awareness on gender
issues in Turkey, both at the national and at the local
level, and helping to build institutional capacity in the
Government and in civil society for achieving equity
and inclusion for women in Turkey.
Disaster and Crisis Response: Turkey has been hit
by major disasters and crises in recent years,
particularly by major earthquakes and by a potential
refugee crisis in the wake of the 2003 Iraq war (which
fortunately did not materialise). The UNDP was
successful in helping to mobilise and coordinate the
capacities of the UN agencies in close cooperation
with those of the Government and civil society in
responding to these crises.
The key ingredients of successful engagement by the
UNDP in these areas have been as follows:
Formed effective coalitions with national, regional
and local authorities, with civil society, the
international donor community, UN agencies and
International Financial Institutions (IFIs) in dialogue
and collaboration
Found reliable international funding partners
Stayed engaged over long periods
Created local institutional capacity to support
advocacy and operational activities
Responded quickly to crisis situations with
concentrated focus and full deployment of its
institutional resources, even at the risk of neglecting
some of its ongoing longer-term development
initiatives.
Some of the UNDP’s initiatives were less successful,
and even some of the more successful ones faced
difficulties. The following are the main lessons for the
UNDP as it responds in future to the key systemic
challenges identified above for Turkey:
Focus and Selectivity: The two Country Cooperation
Frameworks (CCFs) reviewed for this ADR suffered
from an excessive scope and fragmentation of effort.
This was reinforced by ad hoc responses to various
stakeholder requests, including from UNDP
Headquarters, and also by the need to retrofit country
priorities into a globally defined set of goals through
the UNDP’s Results Based Management (RBM)
tools. Over the last year, the Turkey Country Office
has successfully begun to narrow the focus of its
strategic agenda, although there remain areas where
tough choices will have to be made.
Government Ownership: For some UNDP projects,
lack of Government commitment and unwillingness
of the implementing agency to disburse the
Government’s funding as agreed led to early project
cancellations or lack of sustained progress. Turnover
in Government counterparts has been frequent and
has complicated and weakened UNDP programme
impact. To ensure a strong Government ownership
in present day Turkey, the challenge will be for the
UNDP to find ways to make its programme clearly
supportive of the EU accession process, but at the
same time retain its own thematic vision and identity.
Monitoring and Evaluating for Sustainable and
Scaled-up Results: Adequate monitoring and
evaluation at the project level has been scarce and has
mainly consisted of self-reporting by project
managements. Assessments of baseline institutional
and social conditions appear to have been rare,
monitoring of progress has been of mixed intensity,
and end-of-programme evaluation has been either
non-existent or of relatively low quality. This limited
the scope for well-informed review and decision
making by the UNDP and by the Government and
its partners in terms of whether or not particular
programmes and initiatives deserve to be continued,
whether they have the potential to survive and be
scaled-up, and whether they show promise of longerterm
development impact.
Implementation Modalities: One major line of
activity during the 1990s was for the UNDP to serve
as an implementing agency for WB loan-funded
projects through Management Service Agreements
(MSAs). The UNDP did not get involved in the
substantive aspects of the project preparation and
implementation and hence its value added was
limited. Also, no significant administrative capacity
was created in the Government, due to the layering in
project implementation created by use of Project
Implementation Units. For these reasons, the
MSAs are now being phased out. A similar layering
problem, however, has also been observed in other