Turkey, which began reporting to the DAC in 1990, has increased its global development assistance substantially in recent years. It rose nominally from $64.1 million in 2001 to $966.8 million in 2010, reaching 0.13% ODA/GNI. This 15-fold increase resulted from significant boosts in Turkey’s bilateral development assistance to countries such as Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Pakistan.

The majority of Turkey’s development assistance is disbursed through bilateral channels; in 2010, $919.5 million of its global ODA was bilateral and $47.3 million was multilateral.

The Turkish government has committed to increase its global ODA to reach 0.2% ODA/GNI, although it has not set a date for meeting this target. If Turkey’s accession to EU membership is successful, it should be expected to commit to the EU12 targets to reach 0.17% ODA/GNI by 2010 and 0.33% ODA/GNI by 2015, though it is unlikely to become a member before 2015.

Turkey has also steadily increased its ODA to sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, from $7.7 million in 2000 to an estimated $71.2 million in 2010.3 However, its ODA to the region as a proportion of global ODA decreased from 18% to 7% between 2003 and 2009, largely because of the substantial increases in global ODA to other regions. Among African countries, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan were the largest recipients of Turkish assistance in 2009.

In sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey’s development assistance is mainly focused on capacity building and supporting physical infrastructure for providing social services. In 2009, 20% of its bilateral aid to the region was disbursed in the form of technical assistance.

The Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency (TIKA) was created in 1992 following the collapse of Communism in the Caucasus, and acts as the Turkish government’s main development cooperation agency. TIKA has offices in Ethiopia, Senegal and Sudan, which oversee projects in countries across the continent. Turkey has not set specific development assistance targets for sub-Saharan Africa, but it did launch an official policy towards the continent in the Turkey–Africa Partnership Joint Action Plan for the period 2010–14. The plan is intended to improve Turkey’s relations with the African Union, regional economic communities and African nations on both bilateral and multilateral platforms.

Although Turkey is a signatory of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, there are very few details on the effectiveness of its development assistance. It does not report its levels of tied aid to the DAC, but TIKA’s annual reports suggest that a large proportion of Turkish bilateral aid is in kind, which generally is more tied than cash grants.