Youth, ICT, and Democracy in Turkey: Interview with Sezai Hazir, Founder of Habitat Center for Development and Governance, Leading NGO in the Field of Local Democracy and Youth Participation in Turkey

Mr. Hazir: When we first founded Habitat Center for Development and Governance in 1996, our aim was to create a “communication bridge” between young people in Turkey and young people in the world. ICT were not as wide spread in Turkey; many didn’t understand what we intended to accomplish. Back then, there was no youth work as such. You cannot expect young people to demand their rights or to benefit from participatory mechanisms unless you raise awareness on these concepts. This is why we first focused our work on awareness raising and capacity building. Our association is at the same time part of a global youth network. Our access to global processes and information helped us learn about social responsibility projects of the international ICT companies. We started partnering with companies like Cisco and Microsoft to bridge their projects with our projects for increasing awareness and for helping build that communication bridge. The projects were focused on vocational training and youth employment. As the Youth, ICT, and Democracy in Turkey: Interview with Sezai Hazir, Founder of Habitat Center for Development and Governance, Leading NGO in the Field of Local Democracy and Youth Participation in Turkey