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10-13-2004: Law Reform Reports on Turkey Released
The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law provided technical assistance to TUSEV’s Comparative Reports Project, an initiative of TUSEV’s NGO Law Reform Programme. The objective of this project was to:
- Conduct extensive research to identify specific issues in legislation governing NGOs (including both associations and foundations) which merit reform;
- Examine each specific issue from a comparative law perspective; and
- Propose specific and feasible resolutions.
The desired impact was to develop a succinct set of reports listing issues which merit reform, providing key decision makers with comparative perspectives and information on international ”good practices”.
There were three separate comparative reports developed under this initiative: Associations Law Comparative Report, Foundations Law Comparative Report and Public Benefit Law Comparative Report. The selection of the issues to be examined in each report was based on experiential inputs from NGOs (TÜSEV receives at least 10 calls weekly from NGOs facing several legal and fiscal problems), comments from other NGOs, and analysis of legislation/regulations. Some of the topics covered in the reports are:
- Cumbersome regulations and excessive interference of State in internal affairs of NGOs;
- Prior authorization requirements to engage with international organizations;
- Limitations on freedom of association;
- Weaknesses in public benefit definitions and application of this status.