Reports - United Nations Development Programme

ANNEXE 8: UNDP TURKEY VISION
The Country Office should be opportunistic and hire
a professional PR firm to make this happen. The Country
Office should find champions/allies among influential
players including public opinion leaders and policy makers.
2. THE UNDP SHOULD BE AT THE RIGHT PLACE
AT THE RIGHT TIME
To be at the centre of the national agenda requires being
in the right place at the right time. The environment is
conducive for the UNDP considering that Turkey
perceives itself and is also perceived as an unsettled state,
with new actors at the helm who have to deliver in a
relatively short time. At the same time, knowledge, which
is at the heart of the new UNDP brand, is a recognised
weakness in Turkey’s development.
There are a number of opportunities for the UNDP
to provide policy advice in areas that are central /related to
national priorities. In addition to poverty analysis,
reduction of social and economic disparities and local
governance (which the UNDP is already pursuing) these
areas could include:
Information and Communication Technology for
Development (ICTD) (e.g. from the perspective of
the knowledge economy, public administration
reform, public-private partnership, etc.)
Emerging donor role for Turkey and Turkey’s
involvement in sub-regional organisations (e.g. Black
Sea, ECO, OSCE, etc.)
Cross-border cooperation (which is also relevant for
the EU)
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
National Human Development Report (NHDR),
making a much stronger use of the research
conducted for the NHDR and creating similar
knowledge in areas where other actors are less active
Small and Medium sized Enterprise (SME) and
micro-finance or micro grants in the context of
decentralisation
Cooperation with the private sector (approaching big
players in a new way)
Anti-corruption (brought back to the forefront by the
new Government)
At the same time, there are a number of constraints
that need to be considered, including:
The national partnership environment remains
fragmented
UNDP interventions under the Country Cooperation
Framework (CCF) remain fragmented within each of
the two pillars of the CCF (poverty and governance)
UNDP tends to start good processes but does not
complete them to the point where they can make
a difference
There is a danger of putting too many eggs in the EU
basket (so there is a need to focus on the Acquis as a
guide for the orientation of national development
rather than on accession to the EU per se)
3. UNDP NEEDS ALLIES AND RESOURCES
TO CARRY THE VISION FORTH
The amount of money the UNDP has to spend does not
necessarily determine whether we have a place at the
central table or not, but it affects our ability to speak out.
We should incorporate visibility and image building more
strongly into our resource mobilisation efforts. Since it is
clear that the environment is not conducive for us to rely
on one or two large projects for resource mobilisation, we
should diversify our efforts and:
Focus on delivery of political commitment of the
new Government
Focus on partners who are instrumental in this delivery
Continue to develop partnerships with new, nontraditional
partners, using new instruments (e.g.
privately funded Trust Funds)
Continue to work with the WB and the EU
in parallel
Continue to work with Civil Society Organisations
(CSOs), assessing the extent to which they are power
brokers in society.
C. The Vision Partnership Strategy
1. STRONG UNDERSTANDING OF THE DEVELOPMENT
AGENDA AND ENGAGEMENT IN IT
The UNDP Country Review argues that “UNDP
should be able to assist Turkey in identifying
opportunities that will broaden the economic base of
a state in a rapidly changing global economy, in part
by leading it to intellectual capital and social
resources – foreign and domestic – that can augment
and sustain reform”. In a dynamic environment, the
Country Office will be judged in part by its level of
analysis, policy advice and ability to implement.
The UNDP must be in a position to anticipate,
analyse and design interventions to respond to the
effects of a loss of agricultural subsidies and shrinking
urban sector, rising unemployment and related
austerity measures, which make it difficult for the
state to provide social safety nets for the most
vulnerable. From a policy perspective, the UNDP
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