Introducing Citizens Advice Bureaus to Turkey
by
KLAUS JURGENS

Civil society away from İstanbul or Ankara

The officially registered Solidarity with British Association is operating out of Didim, an ever-growing and, over the last six to seven years, quite significantly prosperous resort on the southern Aegean coast. Its brand new D-Marina is scheduled for inauguration in September with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expected to be the guest of honor. The town's population has grown at a very fast pace over the last 10 years or so. Contrary to popular belief, Didim is not simply a holiday resort for foreign guests -- many thousands of Turkish citizens have declared Didim their second, if not their first permanent residence. The problem is similar to the one encountered in many Turkish holiday resorts: Turkish summer guests are not taxpayers in the resort, and the town hall, or belediye in Turkish, quickly runs out of money. British residents would not normally pay income tax either as they do not work in Turkey, a problematic situation for any mayor to say the least.

My Turkish, British and Canadian interview partners had been invited by Fulya Önder, the founder of the Didim association. According to their statements, their modus operandi resembles that of a British CAB. So what is a CAB, what can they achieve and why does Turkey need them?

Around 1.9 million people visited the 426 CABs that are at present operative in England and Wales within one calendar year. The related back-up, help-yourself Web site recorded 7 million hits over the same period, the fiscal year 2007/2008 (all figures extracted from www.citizensadvice.org.uk). One center, Milton Keynes, managed to deal with 41 visitors in a single morning's session. They give confidential, free, impartial and independent advice on an individual's rights as well as his or her civic responsibilities. Now a powerful lobby, they may be able to influence decisions, too.

The present-day CABs have their origins in 1939 in England, the country where Fulya embarked on her law studies. Initially designed in 1935 to provide information to those affected by decreasing social welfare provision, World War II added even more urgency to their establishment; one day after the government declared war, on Sept. 3, 1939, the first 200 CABs opened their doors. Their services were entirely based on volunteer work. Wartime meant people lost their ration books, became homeless or tried to locate missing relatives. Financial matters played a key role, too, as many wartime families had to make ends meet without a major breadwinner. By 1942, 1,074 CABs were in operation.

After the war and by the year 1960, the number of CABs had been reduced to 416. Housing topped the list on the CABs agendas. In the 1970s, consumer protection became a new focus of concerns and complaints. CABs deal with individual debt, housing and (un)employment. In 2008, 426 CABs were active in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own citizen's advice networks. Present-day CABs are individually registered charities, employing 6,000 staff supported by more than 20,000 volunteers.

If a CAB takes your case on board, they may actually represent you in court, too. In most instances, however, they act as a mediator between parties trying to avoid a court case. Whereas commercial legal advisers rely on fees, which increase according to involvement, and a court case brings extra revenue, CABs are supposed to work differently: by mediation, which begins with correspondence between the quarrelling factions drafted with expert CAB advice. CABs keep a stock of leaflets about most issues of social relevance and act as a walk-in helpdesk for many topics of concern. In the new millennium, issues such as discrimination, age-related problems, drug-related matters, health and family planning/sexual health and asylum issues were added to a long list of subjects.

Sea, sand and sun: There is much more to international civil society

Back to Didim and my interview partner Fulya, whose association was set up in September 2008. Many of her volunteers simply want to do good for the community they live in. PR pays off -- after the local English language newspaper (www.voicesnewspaper.com) had published a feature about the association, it had a considerable amount of calls and visits from expatriates. I asked her which issues are of concern to the expatriate community and was told that obtaining title deeds as well as questions about schools and hospitals top their list. Interpretation facilities are another hot topic.

Without government funds available, the association relies on annual membership fees, which are TL 100 per person, and membership is growing. Everyone is welcome to pop in, though and have a chat over a cup of tea with regards to their individual situation. One of their aims is to help expatriates learn more about Turkey and how to better integrate into Turkish society.

Fulya, a young mother-of-one herself, knows about the complexities of sending a child to school in a different country but believes in the Turkish CAB doing what English CABs did for foreigners and British citizens alike in the UK -- supporting them when perhaps no one else does. She said: “Instead of living in separate communities, we hope that people with live together and support each other. We hope to see British people become eligible for elections. As they live in this country and pay their taxes and their children go to schools, they should have a voice in this community.” Plans are in the pipeline to ask local and European bodies for support should a suitable call for grants come their way.

Ideally, future Turkish CABs would react to changing trends in society, and Turkish society is on a fast-track toward modernization, which entails citizens needing more advice as the world has advanced but has become more complex, too. Think health care, family planning, bureaucracy, work-related matters, aging, housing, education, unfair dismissal, discrimination in the workplace or at educational institutions… Advice, however, must come to the people, not the other way round.

What could a Turkish CAB network contribute to society?

 A Turkish CAB network could take on many issues from the pilot project in Didim. CABs are no competition for professional lawyers, as they try to support citizens who perhaps otherwise would fall through the legal net. Many injustices encountered by civil society -- take employment law, family law and individual rights as examples -- had never been brought to light because those suffering from them did not have the financial means to take their opponents to court or pay a lawyer's fees in the first place. To make matters worse, many were not even aware that they had the right to go to court as this was what the authorities wanted the average person to believe.

I made a quick calculation: Running a network of 81 CABs (one per province) with five paid and five voluntary staff would cost approximately 90,000 euros per CAB per annum per province, totaling 7.29 million euros per year, a huge amount. However, if run as a charity and in close cooperation with money-generating civil society organizations such as large holdings and trusts, financing should not be the real obstacle, particularly if those who always talk about the state without actually doing anything for its people opened their pockets. The EU should take this task on board, but it would be premature for Turkey to wait for another twinning project or further pre-accession assistance. So, would it be possible to generate this amount from within? I would hope so, in particular if run as a public-private partnership.

Upon leaving Didim, I reflected on the fact that developments there have shown that civil society can achieve a lot as long as the legal framework allows for it and volunteers are paired with professionals. Sometimes people far away from either the financial center, İstanbul, or the political capital, Ankara, engage far more in our society, contrary to what we would perhaps expect. I would describe Didim as a role model for where different opinions and opinion-makers successfully and happily live side-by-side. Besides, what I saw at Fulya's association is actually the way it is supposed to be -- civil society movements start at a grassroots level and are not designed by central casting. In other words: Turkey would benefit from 80 more Fulyas and 80 more Didims!