 government are receiving the majority of the European Union grants and funds allocated for projects in Turkey, according to a report by the T24 news website.){kind=link}
Organizations close to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government are receiving the majority of the European Union grants and funds allocated for projects in Turkey, according to a report by the T24 news website.
The revelations underscore the substantial financial support that pro-government foundations in Turkey have received from the EU. The Turkey Youth Foundation (TÜGVA), a foundation linked to Erdoğan’s government, and similar organizations, including the Service for Youth and Education Foundation of Turkey (TÜRGEV) and the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA), have benefited significantly from these funds. The support persists despite the Turkish government’s criticism of foreign-funded independent media and NGOs.
In a related development, the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), through its affiliated Turkey Diyanet Foundation, received a €45,870 grant from the EU’s Erasmus+ program for a project aimed at building institutional capacity for youth work. This comes despite the foundation reporting a significant increase in its revenue, rising from 847,000 Turkish lira in 2022 to nearly 49 million lira in 2023, a 57-fold increase.
TÜGVA has secured over €700,000 in EU Erasmus funds for 16 projects since 2020. Investigative journalist Metin Cihan revealed that TÜGVA was awarded €247,904 for a project on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), with additional projects receiving amounts ranging from €24,000 to €86,000. Between 2021 and 2023 TÜGVA obtained €24,479 for four projects under the European Solidarity Corps, managed by the European Commission.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry responded to the controversy by clarifying that the funds provided to these foundations were not direct grants but rather competitive grants awarded under the EU’s stringent project evaluation criteria. The ministry emphasized that the projects were independently assessed and funded according to EU guidelines, urging the public not to be misled by what it described as deliberately misleading reports.
Investigative journalist Cihan had previously noted that the EU is funding projects of foundations and think tanks that support Erdoğan and the AKP government, despite the administration’s tough stance on journalists and rights advocates who use funds from abroad. Pro-government foundations benefit from the very funds they criticize when used by independent media and NGOs, according to Cihan.
Turkey, which has had a poor record of freedom of the press for years, ranks 158th among 180 countries in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index published on May 3 on the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day.