Turkey to revitalize fishing industry in Central Asia

The 'leadership' role attributed to Turkey by neighboring nations is proving itself especially true in global social responsibility projects. For many years, Turkey was qualified as a country needing assistance by the United Nations, however ever since the year 2007, Turkey has now taken on the status of being a 'donor country' providing aid to other countries in need. In 2012, the Food and Agricultural Association will be renewing a ten million dollar agreement to use for development projects in Central Asia. The initial agreement, which was for 27 projects in six different areas, will be renewed in 2012 with a majority of the projects to be continued for the next five-year period.
250 FISHERS TRAINED
One of the biggest projects Turkey has conducted with the FAO; Fish-Dev, is dedicated to initiatives and employment opportunities in the fishing industry. This year a number of significant milestones were reached with the project, in which Turkey is represented by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Husbandry. The project began with the establishing of six regional offices in the Central Asian nations; Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in order to increase activities pertaining to fishing and aquaculture as well as to decrease rural poverty. Costing two million dollars to set up, Fish-Dev was developed in light of the halting of employment opportunities in fishing and water product industries in these specific countries since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
250 ENTREPRENEURS TRAINED
One of the directors of the FAO Fish-Dev project, Dr. Özgür Altan, states that this project aims to revitalize sources of inexpensive protein for people as well as to provide job opportunities. Scheduled to continue until 2014, Altan explains that for the Fish- Dev project, they aim to train over 400 private and public sector workers from these nations. Altan describes the project's objectives as follows: "With the training sessions and workshops provided between the year 2010 and 2011, we provided education for 250 people, 80 of which were women. We expect that number to reach 400 by the end of the project. The Azeri, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Tajik participants have already slowly begun to put into action the knowledge and experience they acquired from the training sessions."
JOBS FOR 3,000

Dr. Özgür Altan also draws attention to the fact that Fish-Dev's employment targets are also quite significant. According to the project's objectives, the operations that will be set up in the aquaculture industry should provide 3,000 job opportunities, 1,000 of which will be in the private sector. Stating that they aim to set up a ten million dollar market, Altan states, "The biggest partner in the project is Turkey, therefore, as a result, relations with Central Asian countries in water products trade will also become further advanced."
ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY SEED PRODUCTION
Another of the FAO's project's in Central Asia in which Turkey is engaged with has to do with the development of seeds.The project devoted to analyzing the seed sector in Central Asia as well as preparing a regional master plan, has been budgeted at 350,000 dollars in costs. As a result of this project, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have all begun important work on advancing seed growing efforts, which will become a significant factor in the future in terms food policy. These efforts began with an assessment program to evaluate the situation at present. From here on out, policies such as the establishing of environmental seed growing will also be able to be implemented. This strategically significant project encompassed the Turkic Republics in its first stage, however later, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan were also added. The results of this two-year project hold much importance for Turkey and the FAO.