Turkey's Development Assistance to Fragile States: From Sporadic Actions to System Building Practices

Abstract

This article aims at presenting policy recommendations for Turkish decision makers with a view to address Turkey's needs to ensure effective and timely development assistance to fragile states. The analysis begins with a quick look at the controversial relation between aid, growth and poverty in order to provide a basis for understanding aid effectiveness as well as some of the ongoing debates and limitations in the development assistance field. It then gives an insight on the current state of Turkey's development assistance to fragile states and briefly explains major characteristics of Turkey's aid policies and practices in fragile state contexts. The study focuses on describing the necessity for shifting Turkey's development assistance paradigm and is concluded with recommending a new paradigm along with its operational framework in three pillars namely; Institutionalizing Peace, Building the Functional State and Risk Distribution.