Reports - United Nations Development Programme

COUNTRY EVALUATION: ASSESSMENT OF DEVELOPMENT RESULTS – TURKEY
Foreword
The Assessment of Development Results (ADR) report for Turkey
presents findings by the UNDP’s Evaluation Office through the work of
its ADR Evaluation Team in January 2004. It represents an important,
integral part of the UNDP’s Results Based Management (RBM) system,
which focuses on the UNDP’s contribution to broader development results
and outcomes. The ADR is an independent, forward-looking assessment
of UNDP support in the last five to seven years, and is designed to
inform future programme directions. The focus is on assessing the
UNDP’s contribution to the development priorities of Turkey based on
outcomes in core thematic areas of support, the lessons learned, and
identification of possible areas of future support.
This ADR concludes that, like Turkey itself, the UNDP programme is at
an important crossroads. In that context, it states that the UNDP has an
important role to play in the present and future Turkey, and highlights a
number of results produced in the key thematic areas of governance, poverty,
gender, environment and crisis response. The Report also suggests,
however, that a further focus on these core thematic areas, implemented
through a strong combination of international and national expertise,
would further enhance the UNDP’s comparative advantages. In terms of
strategic issues related to the delivery of the programme, the Report
suggests that activities where the UNDP has a purely administrative
involvement should be avoided, that there is a need to reduce the potential
for “layering” in execution and implementation arrangements between the
UNDP and the actual project activities on the ground, and that the UNDP
needs to monitor and evaluate the outcomes of its interventions more
systematically. At this crossroads, renewal of partnerships for substantive
programme collaboration as well as financial contributions is needed,
focusing on core thematic areas, and the core partnership with the Turkish
Government will be the key entry point for all such endeavours.
In researching and preparing this ADR, the UNDP Evaluation Office
is greatly indebted to the ADR Evaluation Team Leader Mr. Johannes
Linn, as well as to Professor Dr. Ayşe Ayata, Mr. Rajeev Pillay and
Mr. Knut Ostby, the ADR Evaluation Team members and key contributors
to the Report. Other important contributions were made through the
in-depth studies on regional disparities and poverty, and on local
governance and capacity building, conducted by Prof. Dr. Yusuf Ziya
Özcan, and by Prof. Dr. Çelik Aruoba with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nesrin Algan
and Mr. Tezcan Abay, respectively. Within the Evaluation Office, the
preparation of this Report was facilitated by technical and administrative
support from Mr. Anish Pradhan and Ms. Elvira Larrain. Mr. Fa-Tai
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