Turkey’s Long Journey with Foreign Aid

What has it achieved so far?

Turkey’s foreign aid adventure has started in 1947 when the country received considerable amount of aid in the framework of US’s Marshall Plan. For Turkey, the aid landscape has changed as well as the roles between many recipients and donors since then. The country is now an important emerging donor with over 3 billion USD (as of 2013) official development assistance mainly to Central Asia, Middle East and Africa.

Still, what good did foreign aid programs make for Turkey to this day so that it now tries to replicate them for others so eagerly? Let’s have a quick look over some macroeconomic indicators.

read more>>

Leia Mais…

How do you like your aid statistics?

Do rich countries try to manipulate aid statistics to avoid criticism?

Two weeks ago, the corridors of OECD’s Conference Center were quite crowded. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the organization was convened to discuss a significant change over aid statistics, which they call “modernizing”. This “modernizing” has three main pillars; including several other flows to Official Development Assistance (ODA) definition, redefining the term “concessional in character” and revising the ODA eligible country list.

read more>>

Leia Mais…

Who is Going to Win in Syria?

Yesterday UN presented its tenth report on the plight in Syria accusing both government forces and insurgents of committing crimes against humanity. What’s worse, the report continues, both sides do not show a slight sign of fear that they might be held accountable someday. Well, that seems optimistic.

Assuming that providing arms (whether chemical or conventional) to either side would end the war is naive. Almost everyone knows that this will only bring more destruction and human tragedy upon the people of Syria (see here) whose perpetrators cannot be even identified let alone punished.

read more>>

Leia Mais…