‘Town Twinning Summit’ was held in Ankara on December 5, 2019 within the scope of the ‘Town Twinning between Turkey and the EU Project’ of which Ministry of Foreign Affairs Directorate for EU Affairs is the beneficiary.
The summit, which took place with the contributions and participation of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Director for EU Affairs, Ambassador Faruk Kaymakcı, Deputy Head of Delegation of EU to Turkey Eleftheria Pertzinido and Prof. Dr. İlber Ortaylı; gave a large number of representatives of local authorities, universities, non-governmental organizations and international organizations from EU member states as well as from Turkey who work on town twinning issues, a chance to get together. Town Twinning Summit continued with the Future of the Cities Panel Discussion, the discussion was moderated by by Bülent Özcan, Directorate for EU Affairs, and Acting Director General for Financial Cooperation and Project Implementation. The panellists were; Gaye Doğanoğlu, F. Vice President of Council of Europe-Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, Rubeena Esmail-Arndt, Country Director of GIZ Turkey, Anne Lies Risseeuw, Regional Manager of Europe, Middle East and North Africa Projects, VNG International, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Birol Ekici, Secretary General of the Union of Municipalities of Turkey.
After the lunch, the session started with speech of Dr. M. Cemil Arslan, Secretary General of Marmara Municipalities Union, the speech was about “Towards Sustainable Cities”. After this speech the last panel disscusion was started. The panel discussion was about Future of the Cities, the moderator of the discussion was Kayhan Özüm, Deputy Secretary General of the Union of Municipalities of Turkey. The panellists of this part were; Osman Toprak, Acting Mayor of Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality, Gülsün Bor Güner, Deputy Mayor of Çankaya Municipality, Mihály Babák, Mayor of Szarvas Municipality, Begoña Floria Eseberri, Director of Tarragona Smart Region Foundation and Former Deputy Mayor of City Council of Tarragon, Aleksejs Stecs, Deputy Mayor of Rezekne City Council. At the last session of the event Head of Department of Project Implementation A. Hakan Atik made a closing speech and he invited all project representatives of Town Twinning Grant Scheme to the stage and gave a thank you plaque. The Town Twinning Summit, Ankara was finalised with taking the family photo.
The Town Twinning Summit was organized with 296 participants. 10 of participants were joint to Summit from EU countries and 40 of which, mainly composed of the representatives of Grant Scheme projects, joint to Summit from other cities in Turkey.
More information on Town Twinning between Turkey and the EU Project is accessible at www.yereldeab.org.tr