Verdens fjerdestørste donor af humanitær bistand er Tyrkiet. Det er bl.a. landets voksende økonomi, en general udenrigspolitiske opprioritering og humanitære kriser tæt på landet – ikke mindst borgerkrigen i Syrien – der har drevet udviklingen.
ANKARA, 27 March 2014 (IRIN): When more than 500,000 Iraqi refugees flooded the Turkish border in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many of them ended up sleeping on the streets with little assistance.
Today, around the same number of Syrians are being hosted in Turkey – more than 220,000 of them in state-of-the art refugee camps.
In Indonesia, Turkey is now associated with the warm bread it distributed following the 2004 tsunami, and in Somalia, it is linked to some of the first humanitarian aid provided during the 2011 famine.
From humble beginnings, Turkey is maturing into a major player in international humanitarian aid. In 2012, the last year for which there are complete statistics, Turkey became the world’s fourth largest government donor of humanitarian aid and the largest non-Western provider of development assistance outside the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
It owes this new role to a growing economy, a more international outlook and a series of disasters on its doorstep, notably the Syrian crisis.
“Recent economic and social developments, along with Turkey’s geopolitical situation, have changed Turkey’s position as a country that needs a hand to a country that gives a hand,” says the website of the government’s coordinating body for foreign aid, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA).
And as it has grown, Turkey’s aid has taken its own form – largely bilateral and on the frontlines – arousing both critics and admirers.
From rags to riches
Turkey has dispensed international aid since the 1950s, though it was often limited. In 1993, following the Cold War, the government created TIKA, which largely directed aid to former Soviet states along its eastern border.
But with the arrival of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002, and with its gross national product booming, Turkey opened up to the world, adopting a new foreign policy that saw aid as an important component.
“Turkey has understood that the world has changed profoundly and new allies, strategic calculations and planning are a must in a rapidly shifting global economy,” writes doctoral candidate Mehmet Özakan in an article in Turkey Policy Quarterly. “Behind much of the lofty political rhetoric about humanitarian aid and economic development, Turkey’s Africa policy is driven by a long-term orientation of Turkey in international politics.”
Fatih Özer, head of the response department at the recently created Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), told IRIN last autumn that Turkey is motivated by a saying of the Prophet Muhammed: “He who sleeps on a full stomach whilst his neighbour goes hungry is not one of us.”
“It’s both in our culture and due to our economic power,” Özer says.
While Turkey initially directed aid to areas formerly under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, its reach has since diversified, stretching as far as Chile and Japan. Turkey declared 2005 “the year of Africa”, and in 2011, it pledged to spend US$200 million annually on the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDC).
“Our cultural geography is our main focus,” says Mehmet Yilmaz, head of external affairs and partnerships at TIKA, which now has offices in 31 countries. “But also, there are countries with urgent needs like Somalia and Pakistan, and the LDCs.”
In recent years, Turkey’s humanitarian assistance has propelled it to the frontlines of the aid community.
Turkey is itself prone to humanitarian disasters, with 80 percent of its territory at high risk of earthquakes. In 1999, a magnitude-7.4 earthquake in Turkey’s northwest caused significant damage and helped it discover “how important international humanitarian assistance was,” said a Foreign Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity, because of government rules that prevent bureaucrats from speaking to the media without prior authorization. “Because of our own experience, our own mistakes… that helped us shape our understanding of our role in international assistance.”
Meanwhile, the last decade saw an enormous number of humanitarian crises around the world: the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, the 2006 war in Lebanon, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the 2011 tsunami in Japan, the 2011 drought in Somalia and conflicts linked to uprisings across the Arab world.
“All these obliged us to actually increase the amount of international aid and to adapt our state structures to respond these disasters quickly, efficiently and in a sustainable manner,” the Foreign Ministry official told IRIN. “Our basic approach is: wherever in the world, whenever a disaster happens.”
“Dynamic” structure
Læs resten af artiklen på IRIN News: http://www.irinnews.org/report/99848/turkey-s-ambitions-as-a-rising-donor
