On 2-3 June, the third phase of the Civil Society Dialogue Programme has ended with the evaluation workshop proceeded with a panel on media and political criteria in Ankara.
Representatives of the Ministry for European Union Affairs, Delegation of the European Union to Turkey, and Central Finance and Contracts Unit; and grant beneficiaries who implemented projects in the third phase has joined together to celebrate their achievements and evaluate the implementation process.
Michael Rupp, Head of Civil Society, Fundamental Rights, Judiciary and Home Affairs Section, and Bülent Özcan, Ministry for European Affairs Director of Project Implementation, shared the outcomes of the Civil Society Dialogue Programme and their opinions about this process during their opening remarks.
Özcan who emphasized the importance of civil society in Turkey’s EU accession process, also informed the audience that grant support to CSOs will continue in the coming periods.
The event continued with the Political Criteria – Media – NGOs and Grant Projects Panel moderated by Ahu Özyurt. During the panel in which Bülent Özcan and Erhan Ertürk from NTV/Star Avrupa participated as panellists, CSOs’ critical role in EU-TR relations and impact of projects completed were discussed together with the media’s contributions to the this unique dialogue opportunity. Ozcan, by demonstrating examples of outstanding Project outputs, underlines the invaluable role of partnership between CSOs from Turkey and EU, leading to a better understanding amongst societies. Erhan Ertürk who was involved in the implementation stage of one of the grant projects titles Erasmus for All implemented by Star Europe TV (A Turkish Channel broadcasting across Europe), mentioned that the project changed their perception on the EU process and made them better understand this journey. He also stated that he often criticized himself as a journalist for not noticing the work conducted in this area earlier and he said that media should more closely follow civil outputs and co-operation in this process.
Following the panel, grantees under the third phase has taken an important role to evaluate their implementation process; point at the challenges they have come across and discuss the lessons learnt. These valuable contributions are considered as the ground for shaping the new phases of the Programme in the coming years.
Grantees has then presented the outstanding issues from their implementation process, how they can sustain their partnership and take the impact they have created further.
The final session of the Programme was dedicated to inform the grant beneficiaries on the coming opportunities. Following the presentations, Murat Özçelebi, Programme Implementation Directorate Coordinator, Ministry for EU Affairs, given a presentation on the financial support to CSOs programmed under the coming period of financial co-operation between EU and Turkey. Following this, Cengiz Çiftçi, Team Leader of Sivil Düşün EU Programme and Emrah Güler, Communication Expert discussed how the interaction between two programmes could be strengthened and how Sivil Düşün could contribute to the sustainability of the completed projects.
