We Came Together With Avcılar City Council

City Councils have been founded based on the Municipality Law No. 5393. City Council aims to raise city vision and hometown consciousness, protect rights and laws; establish principles with regard to sustainable development, environmental awareness, social aid and solidarity, transparency, accountability, participation, governance and decentralization. 

City Councils are democratic structures and governance mechanisms where central governments, local governments, professional organizations classified as public institutions and civil society come together with a partnership approach and within the scope of hometown law; development priorities, problems and visions are defined and debated based on sustainable development principles; solutions are developed; and common mind and specializations are regarded as essentials.

Within the scope of Social Protection Project, we, as WALD, carry out our activities in towns where we have Social Protection Desks in continuous cooperation with city councils. We care about the social integrity of towns. 

In this regard, on December 9, 2020, we organized an online introduction meeting with representatives of Avcılar City Council that run their activities in Avcılar district of Istanbul. Head of Avcılar City Council Turgay Halis Çelik, Secretary General of Avcılar City Council Oğuzcan Mehmet Ercan, WALD Academy Director Hülya Alper, WALD representatives and five refugee women attended the meeting which aimed to locally support social and cultural cohesion by including refugees in city councils and plan some activities to be carried out together with refugees.  

The event started with the speech of the Head of City Council Turgay Halis Çelik. In his speech, Mr. Çelik introduced activities run by the council in the district and shared his desire for the Immigration and Refugees Working Group to become active again. Stating that the official regulations did not allow to open Refugee Council, Mr. Çelik added in his notes that “Immigration and Refugees Working Group could become active through joint activities.  WALD Academy Director Hülya Alper, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of refugees’ participation to city councils which were locally very powerful. 

By the end of the meeting, participants came up with some planning: two institutions would come together in order to plan the participation of refugees in city councils; Head of the Women Council, Head of the Youth Council and WALD Administration would gather for getting to know each other and planning the refugee participation in the relevant councils; and completing the placement of refugees in the Council of Women and Youth Council.