Administrative Reform and Foreign Technical Assistance in Turkiye: An Analysis of the Turkish-German Technical Cooperation Agreement during the First Five-Year Development Plan Period

As international cooperation efforts to build a new world order developed after World War II, administrative reform programs for the modernizationof underdeveloped countries gained great importance. Accordingly, the United Nations established the Regular Technical Cooperation Program in 1946 to respond to the urgent technical assistance needs of developing countries. Although Turkey started to benefit from the Technical Assistance to Underdeveloped Countries Program with the establishment of TODAIE in 1952, the scope of technical assistance expanded with the establishment of SPO and the First Five-Year Development Plan. Turkey needed foreign technical assistance due to the lack of technology and trained personnel in areas such as expert-consultant support in administrative reforms, personnel training and equipment. In this framework, the Turkish-German Technical Cooperation Agreement was signed between the Republic of Turkey and the Federal Republic of Germany on September 15, 1964. From the end of 1964 to the end of 1970, Turkey provided the technical assistance and technical experts it requested from Germany with reference to the Turkish-German Technical Cooperation Agreement. In this study, the technical assistance needed for the development and modernization efforts in the field of public administration within the scope of the First Five-Year Development Plan is examined based on the diplomatic documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Republican Archives of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey State Archives Directorate. The thesis of the article is that administrative reform is a policy transfer