The UN in Türkiye

The United Nations was established on 24 October 1945, after the Second World War, by 51 countries including Türkiye, to achieve a great vision for humanity: maintaining international peace and security, promoting sustainable development, and securing human rights. Its membership now encompasses 193 countries, with its work touching the lives of people in every corner of the globe. As a founding member of the United Nations, Türkiye has actively and significantly contributed to facilitating effective implementation of the UN mandate, ranging from peacekeeping and peace building to improving the lives and livelihoods of the poor world-wide.


SDG tent at Eymir Lake October 2018
Caption: An SDG walk was organized at Eymir Lake in Ankara in October 2018 for celebrating the UN Day.
Photo: © Diego Cupolo/WHO Turkey

Milestones

1

The Organization has been working for more than 50 years in Türkiye, as a partner with the government, private sector, media, women’s groups, NGOs, academia and other representatives of civil society to support the implementation of Türkiye's national vision and implement national programmes and priorities.

2

UN Türkiye initiatives place special emphasis on building capacity, assisting in the design and formulation of national policies, strategies and action plans, sharing information, knowledge and experience and bringing best practices from around the globe to enrich the national development process, in addition to transferring Türkiye's success story in development to third countries.

3

Cooperation framework between the UN and Türkiye is to improve Türkiye’s performance in human development indices taking into consideration Türkiye’s status as an upper Middle Income Country (MIC) on the one hand, and the comparative and competitive advantages of the United Nations system in Türkiye on the other.

4

As a result of enhanced cooperation between Türkiye and the UN, İstanbul has become a regional hub to several UN agencies including the UN Development Coordination Office (DCO). The UN will continue to further strengthen the close work with the Turkish Government.

5

Türkiye continues to host the largest number of refugees worldwide, with close to 4.1 million refugees, including 3.7 million Syrians and nearly 400,000 asylum-seekers and refugees of other nationalities. UN will continue to work with Türkiye in refugee and migrant related issues and urge international community for more burden sharing in humanitarian issues.

6

Our collective effort is to cooperate with Türkiye in its national development and its South-South cooperation efforts . We seek to involve people from all segments of society in our work. This website is a modest attempt to inform our friends and partners about the areas that we engage in and with Turkey.

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The Sustainable Development Goals in Türkiye

The Sustainable Development Goals are a global call to action to end poverty, protect the earth’s environment and climate, and ensure that people everywhere can enjoy peace and prosperity. These are the goals the UN is working on in Türkiye: