Strengthening the capacity of Turkey in STI and facilitating the integration of the Turkish Research Area to the European Research Area through increased participation in H2020

The overall project objective of “Turkey in HORIZON 2020” was to strengthen the capacity of Turkey in Science, Technology, and Innovation, and to facilitate the integration of the Turkish Research Area to the European Research Area through increasing its participation in Horizon 2020.

The project purpose areas were the following: 

• Maintaining the knowledge diffusion established in the previous project and raising awareness about Horizon 2020 via a variety of trainings
• Providing the Turkish Research Area with networking events and activities
• Financially supporting Turkish researchers for networking events, project preparation meetings, and lobbying activities
• Preparing and printing the necessary documents that guided the Turkish Researchers
• Developing online tools to disseminate the necessary relevant information. 

Rationale to the project background: Turkey has invested strongly in R&D and innovation since the early 2000s, and has significantly increased science and research outputs, the size of the research community, and international collaboration. Despite this rapid growth in recent years, the most recent Innovation Union analysis of relative Turkish strengths and weaknesses by the EC still presents various concerns, such as the systemic weakness of the Turkish research and innovation system, specific vulnerable areas like human resources, patents and public-private scientific co-publications, or the declining research quality in Turkey.

In this context, this project provided a very timely intervention. Horizon 2020 provided a real opportunity to build on recent progress within Turkey, and to develop a sustainable research and innovation base that contributed towards core strategic policy goals and targets set out in a number of documents, which were developed and implemented by the Turkish government (e.g. National Science, Technology and Innovation Strategy; Turkish Industrial Strategy Document).
 

You can find more information on the project website.

More information on EuropeAid in general you can find here.

Team:

• Mag. Philipp Brugner, BA, cPM (project leader)
• Magª. Elke Dall

Section: Research Policy & Development

Funding institutions and customers:

• TUBITAK Scientific and Technologcial Research Council of Turkey

• European Business and Innovation Centre Network
• G&G Consulting Turkey
• Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovacao - Consultadoria Empresarial e Fomento da Inovacao S.A.
• International Development Ireland (Coordinator)

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Tags: knowledge transfer, Southeast Europe, training