Turkey: the third sector

Sector overview

Over 148,000 registered civil society organisations (CSOs) operate in Turkey today. Of these, 54% are associations, 39.18% are cooperatives and 3.03% are foundations. They are unevenly distributed across the nation’s 81 provinces, yet there is a broad regional distribution of associations with at least 10 in almost every province. The majority of both associations and foundations are based in Istanbul (13,396 and 1,249) and Ankara (7,056 and 806).

Source of income

According to the Civicus Civil Society Index, CSOs have inadequate financial resources. Findings from the survey reveal that approximately 19% of CSOs feel their financial resources are adequate while 40% reveal that they find them inadequate. In terms of income diversity, 11% of participants stated that their CSOs obtained government funding, while 21% received funding from corporate sources. Other sources of income include foreign funding (28%) and service fees (35%). A relevant majority of participants reported membership fees (88%) and individual donations (60%) as their major sources of income.