Supporting the Needs of Young People in Turkey

What is UNFPA doing to help?

UNFPA has been active across Turkey since 1971, advocating for youth-friendly policies and, through targeted programmes, supporting initiatives to improve the availability of information and

services to young people in Turkey.

In its current programme for Turkey, UNFPA's aims include:

• Establishing youth-friendly services in selected provinces and universities
• Expanding the curriculum and outreach of programmes to involve young men
• Promoting peer education and other awareness-raising activities for young people
• Advocating youth involvement in design and implementation of youth-related projects

As well as its programmes, UNFPA has deployed a number of innovative awareness-raising strategies to get its messages across to young people in Turkey:

As part of the UNFPA-supported campaign on Violence against Women , UNFPA worked with the Turkish Football Federation to ensure that for three days in December 2004 all super league teams wore T-shirts with the campaign logo and appeared on the pitch and thus to a nationwide television audience holding "Stop Violence Against Women" banners.

A Young Journalists Award , supported by UNFPA and organized by the Turkish Journalists Federation, has dealt with the themes of Gender Equality

Every year, approximately 500,000 Turkish soldiers are trained on family planning reproductive health and sexually transmitted infections, HIV/AIDS

Youth Peer Education Electronic Resource (Y-PEER) projects are proving increasingly popular across Turkey. Their programmes mostly cover sexual and reproductive health education, prevention of HIV/AIDS and STIs, prevention of substance abuse, sexual orientation and relationships, protection against violence, gender issues and children's rights, peace education and abstinence. The target groups are mostly university and high school students. For more about YPEER activities in Turkey , click here

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