No result found
2019-10-13
Rockefeller Archive Center;
This report introduces the Turkish Wheat and Training Project, one of the Rockefeller Foundation's flagship agricultural programs in the Near East, and a relatively unstudied player in Turkey's "green revolution." From 1970 to 1982, the Ankara-based, multinational staff collected plant samples from around the world, experimented with high-yielding varieties of (mostly) winter wheat, facilitated Turkish scientists' education abroad, and advocated for wheat's centrality to the Turkish economy. While grafted from the green revolution's most emblematic institution—the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)—the Turkish Wheat Project had roots in two deeper processes: the concept that Turkey was not living up to its agricultural potential and Ankara's engagement with US aid and expertise. After sketching these themes with sources from the Rockefeller Archive Center, this report narrates the wheat project's origins, participants, activities, and shortcomings. While the project's role as an engine of Turkey's agricultural "modernization" was—and remains—difficult to assess, its archive, situated at a confluence of institutions and epistemologies, is a valuable source for approaching the histories of Turkish agriculture, the green revolution, and the Cold War.
2019-09-20
Rockefeller Archive Center;
The purpose of my research at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC) was to identify the ways that American philanthropic foundations' arts-focused initiatives connected to social science programs for modernizing the Middle East in the 1950s. This research is a central component of my forthcoming book, Metrics of Modernity: Art and Development in 1950s Turkey. At the Rockefeller Archive Center, I found that John Marshall, Associate Director for the Humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation, was unusually forward-thinking in his belief that arts-focused philanthropy could help drive development in the Middle East. In what follows, I argue that the Turkish ceramicist Füreya Koral, to whom Marshall offered one of the foundation's very first artist's fellowships in 1956, served as a test case for Marshall's hypothesis that the modern artist had an important role to play in the modernization of the Middle East.
2018-07-02
Third Sector Foundation of Turkey (TUSEV);
Third Sector Foundation of Turkey (TUSEV) published the Monitoring Matrix on Enabling Environment for Civil Society Development Turkey Country Report 2017, prepared in line with the Monitoring Matrix methodology. Developed under the Monitoring Enabling Environment for Civil Society Development Project coordinated by Balkan Civil Society Development Network (BCSDN) through 2012 and 2016, the Monitoring Matrix Methodology analyses the state of civil society in terms of Basic Legal Guarantees of Freedoms, CSO Financial Viability and Sustainability, and Government-CSO Relationship.
2018-04-01
Migration Policy Institute;
This report explores the findings of a nine-country study of ECEC policies and practices designed to serve young children of refugees and asylum seekers. It draws on fieldwork conducted in Belgium, Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States—major host countries with varied refugee and asylum-seeker populations, migration-management policies, and ECEC systems—to highlights both common challenges and promising practices.
2018-03-05
C&A Foundation;
This report presents the results of an independent evaluation of the Giving Refugees a Voice initiative, a pilot project implemented between January 2017 and 2018 by Equiception, Corporate Social Responsibility Association of Turkey (CSR Turkey) and an undisclosed technology partner. The initiative, funded by C&A Foundation with a grant of Euros 450,123, aimed to improve the working conditions for Syrian refugees in the apparel sector in Turkey. The pilot initiative used social media monitoring technology to analyse the public Facebook posts of millions of refugees associated with the apparel sector in Turkey. This Social Media Analysis aimed to demonstrate the systematic presence of Syrians working informally in the supply chains of the apparel sector. The purpose of this analysis was to galvanise brands, MultiStakeholder Initiatives, employers, and others to take actions and make changes that would directly improve the working conditions for Syrian men, women and young people in Turkey.
2017-11-07
K4D Helpdesk;
This rapid review report has identified the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) options used in emergency settings, with decentralised wastewater treatment systems (DEWATS) and mobile wastewater treatment units performing most effectively and with minimal costs. Examples are taken from refugee camps and internally displaced people (IDP) settlements due to the Iraq war, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and the civil wars in Syria and Sudan. WWTP options used in Finland, Haiti, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Sudan and Turkey are discussed. Lessons learned from China and suggestions for the Rohingya crisis are also included.
2017-09-19
Rockefeller Archive Center;
My research in the Rockefeller Archive Center is part of a larger project, tentatively titled, "Land as the Object of Development in Turkey, 1945-1980," that examines contests over land reform as a central site of statecraft, population management, and modernization, where competing visions of agricultural development, upheld by leftist intellectuals, populist politicians, and American experts, were implemented or stalled over the decades. The larger project examines how different approaches to rural development, rooted in the country's political economy, class configurations, and nationalist project, provided both the motivation for and alternatives to "adopting" rural development models urged by American advisors.
2016-11-01
TUSEV;
Civil society organizations (CSOs) are at the heart of Turkey's democratization process. Today there are more than 109,000 associations and 5,075 new foundations (established after the Republic) operating along with many informal organizations such as platforms, initiatives, and groups. Their areas of work are mostly concentrated in social solidarity, delivering social services, education, health and various rights-based issues. Over the past years, the not-for-profit sector in Turkey has grown both in size and the level of participation, and played a significant role in providing services and contributing to the democratization of the country. Despite all of these developments, legal constraints and financial sustainability continue to pose a challenge for the future of the sector. It is of critical importance for CSOs to ensure their financial viability to make a difference in society and contribute to social change through their activities and work
2016-10-01
Economist Intelligence Unit, The;
Fixing Food is an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report on food system sustainability globally, spanning agriculture, nutrition, and food loss and waste. It draws on an interview programme with experts from the academic, public and private sectors and is published alongside the Food Sustainability Index (FSI), a quantitative and qualitative benchmarking model, which ranks 25 countries according to their food system sustainability. The project was developed with the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition (BCFN).
2016-02-29
University College London (UCL) Press;
This book presents an ethnographic study of social media in Mardin, a medium-sized town located in the Kurdish region of Turkey. The town is inhabited mainly by Sunni Muslim Arabs and Kurds, and has been transformed in recent years by urbanisation, neoliberalism and political events.
Elisabetta Costa uses her 15 months of ethnographic research to explain why public-facing social media is more conservative than offline life. Yet, at the same time, social media has opened up unprecedented possibilities for private communications between genders and in relationships among young people – Costa reveals new worlds of intimacy, love and romance. She also discovers that, when viewed from the perspective of people's everyday lives, political participation on social media looks very different to how it is portrayed in studies of political postings separated from their original complex, and highly socialised, context.
2015-10-01
Migration Policy Institute;
This report examines the experiences and resulting educational and mental health needs of Syrian children living as refugees, drawing on the results of a study conducted in Islahiye camp in southeast Turkey, which assessed children's levels of trauma and mental health distress. It also reviews intervention programs in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, and offers recommendations for best practices to address the mental health of this vulnerable child population. Syrian refugee children will likely need ongoing, targeted support to bridge the gaps in their education, attain fluency in the host-country language, and deal with trauma and other mental health symptoms, the authors conclude.
2015-09-25
Civil Society Networks BRICSAM;
The emerging economies Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and Turkey - in short, the BRICSAMIT - have come to be considered the economic powerhouses of recent decades. Not only have these countries managed to reduce poverty; most have embarked on a steep economic growth path and play an increasingly influential role on the global scene. But today, all eight BRICSAMIT countries occupy the top ranks as some of the most unequal countries in the world. The price these countries - and millions of their citizens - pay for this is high. Excessive inequality hampers development prospects: negatively impacting growth potential, threatening poverty reduction, leading to mass migration flows and 'brain drain', and reducing opportunities for young people.
This report, which was commissioned by civil society networks across the BRICSAMIT countries, aims to increase the urgency to tackle the structural causes of inequality by shedding light on the nature and scope of the issue in the BRICSAMIT, and the economic, political and social consequences these countries are now facing as a result.
