Reports - United Nations Development Programme

2. TURKEY — COUNTRY AT A CROSSROADS
issue will likely receive even more attention in the future.
One of the population groups traditionally excluded
and disadvantaged in Turkey have been women. The
development process has tended to exclude women from
economic opportunities and entitlements, particularly in
distant rural areas and in informal settlements of
metropolitan cities. There have been improvements in
women’s living standards, including life expectancy
(which increased from 64 to 72 years between 1980 and
2000) and youth illiteracy for girls (which dropped from
20.2% to 6.0%). However, with the exception of life
expectancy, all available indicators tend to be worse for
women than for men, and generally Turkey does worse on
gender indicators than comparable middle-income
countries (Annexe 7).
Another important set of challenges for Turkey in
creating sustainable human development involves
vulnerability to natural disasters and environmental
sustainability, where it appears that Turkey has a long
way to go. Turkey is particularly vulnerable to devastating
earthquakes, as witnessed by the earthquakes of 1999 and
estimates of exposure to seismic risks. According to a
recent UNDP report, Turkey is in fourth place (after
Armenia, Iran and Yemen) among earthquake-prone
countries in terms of its relative vulnerability. 16 In the
environmental area, Turkey is challenged by its rapid
population increase, by industrialisation and urbanisation,
and by the explosive growth of tourism, which is
threatening its environmentally vulnerable coastal areas.
A final overarching issue that Turkey faces through all
dimensions of its human development challenge is the
need for continued improvement in governance. One of
the goals of the founder of the Turkish Republic was the
establishment of a modern, efficient Government.
Unfortunately however, Turkey’s state bureaucracy has
been characterised by strong centralisation, excessive
control over key aspects of the economy, and inefficient
public resource management. As part of its overall
structural reform programme, in 2001 Turkey started a
comprehensive reform of its public sector, with a focus on
accelerated privatisation, public administration reform,
decentralisation and anti-corruption. 17
These many dimensions of sustainable human
development are well captured by the MDGs, which
cover eight areas in total, of which seven are directly
and highly relevant to Turkey’s sustainable human
development challenges: eradicate poverty and hunger,
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16. See UNDP “Reducing Disaster Risk: A Challenge for Development”, 2003, Section
4 A (v)
17. The World Bank, “Country Assistance Strategy”, October 2003, p. 13
achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality
and empower women, reduce child mortality, combat
communicable diseases, and ensure environmental
sustainability. The Turkish Government and the
UNDP have commissioned the preparation of the first
comprehensive MDG Report (MDGR) for Turkey, to be
prepared by the Human Development Centre in I˚stanbul
in 2004. Preliminary indications are that it will be
difficult for Turkey to attain some of the MDGs by
2015 unless it redoubles its human development efforts.
The main issue facing Turkey, however, is likely to be
serious regional and gender disparities hidden in countrywide
aggregates.
D. EU ACCESSION AS AN OVERARCHING
GOAL AND OPPORTUNITY
Relations between the EU (then the European Economic
Community) and Turkey began with the so-called Ankara
Agreement signed in 1963, which initially focused on the
establishment of a customs union. 18 In 1987 Turkey
applied for EU membership. Turkey’s customs union
with the EU came into effect in 1996. In 1997, the
Luxembourg European Council confirmed Turkey’s
eligibility for accession to the EU, and in December 1999,
the European Council in Helsinki welcomed “recent
positive developments in Turkey, as well as its intentions
to continue its reforms towards complying with the
Copenhagen criteria. Turkey is a candidate State destined
to join the Union on the basis of the same criteria as
applied to the other candidate States.” 19
For its part, Turkey has been moving forward with the
implementation of important and courageous steps to meet
the Copenhagen criteria. In October 2001, parliament
passed a package of 34 constitutional amendments that
included improving the freedom of speech and other
political reforms. In parallel, the Government’s economic
reform programme, implemented since 1999 and
reinforced at the height of the financial crisis in 2001 with
IMF and WB assistance, has propelled Turkey towards
meeting the economic requirements of the Copenhagen
criteria. Progress was further reinforced, especially on the
political front, under the new AKP Government since
November 2002.
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18. The information in this subsection is based principally on information contained
in the EU’s website for Turkey, www.deltur.cec.eu.int.
19. According to the EU Turkey website,“[T]he decisions taken at Helsinki were an
important watershed in EU-Turkey relations. Turkey, like other candidate
countries will benefit from a pre-accession strategy to stimulate and support its
reforms…The Accession Partnership [with Turkey] was formally adopted by the
EU Council on 8 March 2002, is a roadmap for the priorities for Turkey in making
progress towards meeting all the criteria for accession to the EU…On the basis
of this Partnership Agreement Turkish Government has adopted on 19 March
2001 its National Programme for the Adoption of the Acquis”. Ibid.
17