Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 12 ISSUE 4
Written by Coskun SEREFOGLU, Tecer ATSAN

Turkey has acquired a valuable experience on rural development with five-year-development plans that were launched in 1960’s. A number of rural development projects, which have been financed by the United Nations and the World Bank, have been carried out in the underdeveloped regions of Turkey. With the EU Helsinki Council that recognizes Turkey as an EU candidate country in 1999, Though Turkey did not utilize pre-accession assistance programs like PHARE, SAPARD, CARDS, ISPA that Central Eastern European Countries (CEEC’s) took advantage, but she benefited tremendously from the EU pre-accession assistance program under the instrument of IPA rural Development. Following the National Rural Development Strategy, which was prepared by the Ministry of Development in collaboration with the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MoFAL) of Turkey in 2005, Turkish side, provided technical assistance by the EU, worked out IPARD program with the hard negotiations held with the EU Commission concerning the priorities, the number of cities and the number of sub-measures and sectors to be funded under Rural development program. MoFAL decided to implement the IPARD Program in two phases between the periods 2007­2010 and 2011-2013. In the first phase, 20 provinces out of 42 have been funded. The EU allocated 873,89 million Euro for seven-year-period.The setting up an IPARD Paying Agency in Headquarter and its divisions in provincial level took a lot of hard works to get accreditation by the EU. So, the completion of all 20 provinces’ accreditation was concluded as late as in the last quarter of 2011. Nowadays, the IPARD Paying Agency has announced six-call for proposals nowadays. As a result of the first two call for proposals made in 2011, only 15.974.636,95 € of the allocated funds by the EU has been used. This study discusses the process that is made by the EU on rural development program in Turkey and analyse the challenges which is made for benefiting from the EU funds. From the first implementation year of IPARD Program, it seems that Turkey won’t be able to use all funds allocated by the EU.

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agriculture

EU Funds

IPARD Program

Rural Development

Turkish Agriculture