In 2016, Turkey presented its first Voluntary National Review to the High Level Political Forum. In Turkey, sustainability policies are taken place in various laws, regulations and action plans of various policy fields and sectors. But above all, Turkey’s National Development Plan (NDP) is the guiding document for all macro-level national policies and priorities. Turkey has introduced the concept of sustainable development first into 7th Development Plan in 1996 after 1992 Rio Conference. Recently, Rio+20 outcomes have been integrated into 10th Development Plan of Turkey. One of the main axes of the 10th Development Plan is sustainability and the Plan is based on the “human centered development” approach. Additionally, the preliminary analysis show that there is a high coherence between 10th Development Plan and the SDGs.
Turkey is currently in the stage of preparing long term vision of the 11thNational Development Plan. 11thNational Development Plan, whose preparations commenced through a Government Circular dated 30 July 2017, aims to bring Turkey’s development goals forward, aligning them with the 2023 vision of Turkey. The vision provides the development perspective of the Plan by considering the international and national trends in development landscape and serves as the starting point for drafting the Plan itself. Turkey intends to take SDGs as one of the main inputs of the vision that 11thNational Development Plan will be based on. Currently, the 11thNDP is pending to be sent to Parliament for approval.
In Turkey, implementation of SDGs will be a responsibility shared by all stakeholders. In this respect, the integration of SDGs into all documents of relevant strategies and policies at both central and local levels will be enabled in the best possible way. The structure on SDG coordination in Turkey has not been finalized, yet to be reviewed in the eve of the new changes in State structure after June 2018 elections. However, it needs to be strengthened and widened as a high-level technical setting, in line with its coordinating role and the comprehensive nature of the 2030 Agenda. It is expected that Strategy and Budget Office of the Presidency will have a key coordination role to play in monitoring and reporting on SDGs. The next Voluntary National Review of Turkey which will be discussed in High Level Political Forum in 2019 would be an important basis to assess the level of progress and take steps forward for improvement.
Based on the above, it is deemed highly important to engage private sector in SDG nationalization process in Turkey as a key development agent. The Business for SDGs platform will be the main venue for SDGs focused market based research, dialogues, access to businesses and partnerships as a private sector representative arm of SDGs coordination. The Platform will act as an inclusive venue for all businesses to be part of the SDGs related operations of private sector in Turkey, by benefiting from the outreach of TUSIAD and TURKONFED through their over 40,000 member companies, 28 business federations and 210 associations, but not limited to that.