Welcome to the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Turkey
Commitment to social democracy!
- this has been the motto of the political education and advisory work of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) since 1925.
Click here to download an English brochure about the FES.
Promoting democracy and development world wide, contributing to peace and security, shaping a responsible globalised world, as well as supporting the enlargement and development of the European Union. These are the international aims of the work of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
FES’s Turkey office has been promoting the cooperative dialogue of committed people and civil society organisations in both Germany and Turkey for almost twenty-five years. Read more...
Panel event "Union Rights and Union Organizing"
On 25 March the FES Istanbul hosted in Istanbul in cooperation with the Global Union Federations UNI, IFT and IndustriALL a panel event on the issue of “Union Rights and Union Organizing”. About 20 unions presented their campaigns in multinational enterprises and discussed their possibilities of joint actions for the set-up of a strategic supply-chain-management. After the press conference on 26 March the participants visited the picket line of the dismissed DHL workers to show their solidarity.
The statement which has been composed during the conference has been accepted. You can find the program of the event here.
Delegations of the federal states visit Turkey
Representatives of several federal states of Germany visited Turkey and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in the past weeks. Thorsten Schäfer- Gümbel who is the chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in Hesse came in the company of a delegation of the state parliament to Turkey to visit the country in the context of the partnership agreement between Hesse and Bursa. Nils Schmid who is vize prime minister of Baden-Württemberg visited Turkey together with a delegation of entrepreneurs at the end of March. The FES Turkey was actively involved in hosting both delegations and organized round table talks and panel discussions. Here you can find a current article which is also published in FES Info.
Sigmar Gabriel in Turkey
At the end of February the chairman of the SPD Sigmar Gabriel visited together with Hans Peter Bartels (MP and member of the committee of defense) within three days four places in Turkey. Along the way he attended talks with governmental representatives like president Gül, prime minister Erdoğan and the minister for EU affairs Bağiş. He also participated in meetings with the CHP and the BDP. Futhermore, Sigmar Gabriel visited a refugee camp in Kilis at the Syrian border and saw the Patriot unit of the German armed forces which is stationed in Kahramanmaras in the southeast of Turkey. His program was completed through meetings with aid organizations, political analysts and representatives of religious groups.
Presentation about “TEPAV” by Prof. Dr. Güven Sak
On April, 3 the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung in Ankara and the Sosyal Demokrat Dergi (SDD) hosted under the auspices of Dr. Aykan Erdemir a round table talk for young professionals working in politics, economy and academics. Highlight of the meeting was a presentation of Prof. Dr. Güven Sak who introduced the work of the independent “TEPAV” think tank which is one of the most influential economic reasearch institutes in Turkey. Read more...
Visit by an IG Metall Delegation
From 1-4th April a delegation of the IG Metall visited Istanbul and Bursa in order to get informed about trade unions in Turkey and recent trade union laws that were passed in the country. Facility visits at Bosch (Bursa) and Mercedes (Esenyurt/ Istanbul) provided a good opportunity to talk with the employees and to obtain information about trade union activities in the respective companies.
Papandreou visited Istanbul
On March 2nd, 2013 the former Greek prime minister and chairman of the Socialist International Georgios Papandreou attended a major event of the FES in Istanbul and hold a speech about “The way of the Social Democracy Today and in the Future”. Read more...
FES Publication: Social State and Social Democracy
The Turkish translation of the publication “Social State and Social Democracy” is published and free available in the FES offices in Ankara and Istanbul. The book is the third one out of our series about social democracy which has been published by the Academy of social democracy. Read more...
Case Study: Trade Unions in Turkey
After the coup d’état in 1980 the Turkish trade unions were abolished. They never recovered completely from this incident. The deep ideological trenches, an extremely restrictive legislation and a small amount of organization are the characteristics of the trade unions’ weakness. In a study of the FES called “Trade Unions in Turkey” Demet S. Dinler analyzes the situation of the Turkish trade unions and gives recommendations about where the stengthening of the employees’ lobby could start. Read more...
Conference about Freedom of Press
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On November 24th, 2012 the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung organized a conference in cooperation with Umut Vakfı, Bianet and Europäischer Journalistenverband. Its topic was “Freedom of press andfreedom of speech in Turkey”. International guests and media professionals analyzed current developments in media and discussed how to prevent negative trends. You can find the program here.
Conference: "The World in Crisis"
Between 13th and 15th of June 2012 we organized in cooperation with the Middle East Technical University a conference reviewing "The World in Crisis". The main topics affected international relations. Inter alia the focus was on the following issues of international relations: Key players of the global crisis, security threats, global governing, intervention, international social movements, environmental problems and international law. You can find the program here.
Conference: Local and Regional Governments in the New Constitution
One of the most important topics of the debate about the new Turkish constitution regards a discussion about the restructuring of the work-sharing between the regional governments and the central government. There are questions how the new constitution could improve the local government administrations and how this could affect the Kurdish issue. In this context the FES organized a conference on June 9, 2012 in cooperation with TESEV İyi Yönetişim Programı. You can find the program here.
Conference: Transborder Feminist Encounters
The women's organization Amargi invited feminists originating from eleven different countries and regions to a conference held in Istanbul from May 26th to 27th 2012. During the event the participants discussed the situation of women in each country as well as in the respective region. Other than from Turkey, the participants originated from countries that have attracted the attention of the global society for a while. Among those were Tunisia, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, India, Northern Cyprus, Israel and Palestine. The shared motto and wish of the participants is the establishment of peace, meaning the end of warlike confrontations in the mentioned regions. Furthermore it was discussed how a women-friendly policy could be developed and established in order to achieve solidarity across national borders.
Here you can find the program and the poster of the conference.
More photos are available on our Facebook page.
Conference: Hrant Dink Memorial Workshops "New Forms of Social Resistance"
From 24th to 26th of May 2012 the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung hosted in cooperation with Sabancı Üniversitesi İstanbul Politikalar Merkezi, Hrant Dink Vakfı and Anadolu Kültür Vakfı a conference in Istanbul about the topic "New Forms of Social Resistance". Our international guests exchanged in different pannels their views, among others, about art and resistance, occupation as a form of resistance and public resistance against neoliberalism. You can find the program here.
Turkey’s Energy Policy One Year After Fukushima
On March 9th, 2013 a year after the dramatic nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung hosted a public conference about the future of the Turkish energy policy. Not just the developments of the atomic sector but also the potentials of renewable energies and implementation problems. You can find the program here.
Furthermore the book "Nükleer Enerjinin Sonu Mu?" (English: The End of Nuclear Energy?) was presented during the conference. It has been published by Nina Netzer and Jochen Steinhilber and presents the analyses of regional experts on the reactions on Fukushima in 13 countries. Read more...
Cooperative Publication
The conference publication of the German-Turkish economic cooperation in March 2012 has been published in Antalya. The book is available at the AKVAM of Akdeniz University.