Links to EU and international policy in Turkey
In Turkey, sustainable development policies have been incorporated into numerous laws, legislations, regulations, policy documents and action plans in a variety of policy fields and sectors. The National Development Plan (NDP), the highest-level national policy document in Turkey, sets out all macro-level national policies and priorities. Turkey first introduced the concept of sustainable development into the 7th Development Plan in 1996 after the 1992 Rio Conference. Until recently, the 10th Development Plan for 2014-2018 was in effect. The Plan reflected international trends in sustainable development and was indicated to be consistent with SDGs. One of the main principles of the 10th Development Plan is sustainable development; the plan is based on a “human-centred development” approach. Ensuring full access to primary and secondary education, especially for disabled and female students is one of the main objectives of the plan. It illustrates the need to adapt education to the needs of students to ensure the inclusion of disadvantaged people. In addition to this, quality-oriented transformation in the education system, strengthening compliance with the labour market within the framework of lifelong learning and an equality-of-opportunity based perspective on education will be present in the following plan-implementation period.
Turkey is currently in the process of preparing a long-term vision of the 11th NDP. The country intends to take SDGs as one of the main inputs of the vision that the 11th Development Plan will be based on.
EAEA Member, Uluslararası Hayat Boyu Öğrenme Derneği, is currently working on two different projects aimed at increasing the employment of women encouraging them to work and helping them to access information, orientation, and counselling with the aim to encourage engagement in the social enterprise context. The main aim of the project follows the UNDP Turkey core objectives and Common SDGs goal, aimed at ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls, and empowering women to help drive up economic growth and development.