Türkiye

In 2024, more public institutions in Türkiye adopted planning and budgeting practices that address women's specific needs and priorities, while others strengthened their existing practices. This improvement in the utilization of planning tools with concrete targets and budgets towards women’s empowerment is paving the way forward in Türkiye for more effectively addressing violence against women, ensuring equal participation of women in social and economic life.
Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Interior introduced for the first time standalone targets and indicators their 5 years Strategic Plans on better coordinated and strengthened prevention, protection and justice services for women survivors or at risk of violence. This forms the basis of targeted resource allocation in annual budgets for increasing the knowledge of law enforcement and justice officials, and coordination between institutions on combatting violence against women.
The Turkish Employment Agency has introduced, for the first time, a standalone target in its new 5-year Strategic Plan on job placement services specifically for women, with an estimated cost of USD 375. This initiative aims to support women job seekers and vocational trainees in achieving higher employment rates in the private sector. Additionally, costed targets set by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Organization, the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Labor and Social Security, and the Ministry of Family and Social Services ensure public resource allocation to address the low level of women's employment, a significant inequality issue in Türkiye.
Other institutions continued to improve the use of gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) tools. The number of ministries with specific measures on women’s empowerment in the 2025 Presidential Annual Programme has increased to 11, up from 4 in 2020. For the first time, the Ministry of Treasury and Finance has a measure on sex-disaggregated data, and the Ministry of Youth and Sports on increasing women’s representation in sports. The number of performance indicators on women’s empowerment in annual budget programmes has also risen from 39 in 2022 to 60 in 2025, allowing better monitoring of public spending's effects on women and men.
UN Women’s long-standing capacity development and advocacy efforts on implementation of GRB tools in Türkiye have contributed to these improvements. Since 2022, over 2000 public officials and managers from various ministries and public institutions have gained knowledge and practice on GRB through UN Women’s trainings and seminars. UN Women also facilitated the establishment of the GRB Technical Working Group and development of the action plans, guidelines, and analysis in partnership with the Ministry of Family and Social Services and the Presidency of Strategy and Budget.
The advancements contribute to SDG Target 5c and indicator 5.c.1 on policies and legislation for the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

In 2023, the Government of Türkiye further instituted a gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) approach into the planning and budgeting cycle to promote the empowerment of all women and girls, with the technical support of UN Women.
High-level national policy documents now include measures on GRB. First and foremost, the new 12th National Development Plan of the Government for 2024-2028 introduces for the first time a specific policy on mainstreaming of women's empowerment in the development and implementation of all plans and policies with measures on data, budgeting and indicators. Furthermore, the Investment Programme Guideline, which is prepared by the Presidency of Strategy and Budget with the purpose of setting standards for public investment projects, included a GRB approach for the first time in its overall principles and feasibility study sections. The adoption of these and other policy and budget related documents has led to changes in the way public institutions monitor progress on the achievement of their programs. The number of gender sensitive indicators in the 68 central level budget programs has increased from 39 in 2022 up to 59 in 2024.
Ministries have also adopted new programs to address women’s and girls’ specific needs. For example, following gender needs assessment conducted by the Ministry of National Education after the UN Women-supported trainings, budgetary allocations were made for improvements in infrastructure of hostels for secondary schools so they better meet the specific needs of girls. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry included a dedicated target in its Strategic Plan for 2024-2028 for supporting family-owned business, women and youth in rural areas with gender sensitive indicators.
The increasing use of GRB instruments contributes to overcoming the barrier of low financing for gender equality commitments. Based on these improvements, the OECD included Türkiye in 2023 for the first time among the countries having introduced gender budgeting.
Advancements in the field of GRB contribute to SDG Target 5c and indicator 5.c.1 on policies and legislation for the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment. The progress contributes to UNSDCF Türkiye 2021-2025 Outcome 5 on inclusive and rights-based governance system.
Contributing to these changes, 1174 experts, 170 managers from 35 central institutions and 40 Parliamentarians acquired insights on gendered aspects of public services and knowledge on GRB tools through seminars and trainings by UN Women since 2022 including 489 officials and 12 parliamentarians in 2023. Thus, UN Women’s capacity development and advocacy efforts under EU-funded project Implementing Gender-Responsive Planning and Budgeting in Türkiye facilitated these changes. The Ministry of Family and Social Services as the key partner coordinated and supported these initiatives and the Presidency of Strategy and Budget provided technical expertise.