Turkey: volunteer workforce

Volunteering

People in Turkey are two times more likely to become donors, as opposed to members or volunteers of civil society organizations. According to the CSI Turkey Country Report, which assesses 5 different types of civic participation, volunteering is by far the lowest with only 1.5% of citizens reporting to have been involved in voluntary activities. People are most active as volunteers in religious organizations (26%), political parties (13%) and sports organisations (9%). Volunteers dedicate between 2 and 24 hours per week.

New efforts have been put in place to promote voluntarism. The establishment of the Corporate Volunteer Council matches individuals and employees of companies to voluntary projects and has recently designed an online portal (www.gonulluyum.org) to make volunteer opportunities more accessible. The Sabanci University requires a minimum number of volunteer hours as a pre-requisite for graduation and offers specific fiscal incentives for companies and individuals such as the ability to ‘deduct’ time contributed together with donations.

Membership

Participation in associational life in Turkey is rather limited when it comes to CSO membership: only 7.8% of citizens reports to be members of a CSO, of these 30% say that they are members of more than one organisation.

Diversity of membership is rather low. Findings from the Survey on Civil Society in Turkey indicate that 80% of CSOs find women to be under-represented, while 73% consider the upper class / elites to be over-represented. The 2005 statistics from the Department of Associations confirm this trend: there are 770, 671 women members and 3,555,577 male members.