Date: 18 October 2022

In accordance with the Letter of Agreement (LoA) signed between FAO and OMO, under the FAO-Turkey Forestry Partnership Programme, for the development of two full-fledged project documents on ‘Improving Biodiversity and Sustainable Forestry’ and ‘Enhancing the Capacity of the Turkish International Forestry Training Centre’ the virtual closure meeting was held on 18 October 2022 Tuesday between 13-15 pm. See attached participation list (Annex I)  

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İsmail Belen, who is Forestry Specialist for Central Asia – OMO Project Team leader, opened the meeting as the moderator. After giving a warm welcome to participants, he introduced the meeting agenda and then gave the floor to Ms İffet Deniz Cengiz, FTFP National Coordinator, for giving her opening remarks. 

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Ms İffet Deniz Cengiz, by thanking OMO and MAF personnel for their efforts to formulate two project documents, mentioned that the project preparation stage has ended successfully since its start on December 2021, and thanked everyone who played a role in completing them. Finally, she requested countries to validate and sign project documents to be sent them officially in order for projects to start immediately in the region.

Later on, İsmail Belen gave the floor to Mr. Dominique Rreeb, International Expert on Project Design, for making his presentation. Mr. Reeb provided an overview on how the preparation process has been completed and how projects have been formulated, by giving detailed information of project impact, outcome, outputs and strategies to be followed during the implementation. He also explained project’s institutional setup and connection between project team and the related countries. 

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After Mr. Reebs’ presentation, connection was  established with Grand National Assembly of Türkiye and the member of parliament Mr. Ibrahim Aydın and the Head of OMO, Mr. Hasan Türkyılmaz made their remarks and good wishes. While Hasan Türkyılmaz thanked all participants for their efforts and contributions to OMO, İbrahim Aydın first introduced himself and then thanked the project for supporting International Forestry Training Center in Antalya and reiterated that he would be at disposal to forest engineers to support all kind of activities on the ground. 

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İsmail Belen emphasized the willingness of Montenegro to participate in the project activities both biodiversity conservation and sustainable forest management. He also mentioned that he would give the floor to participants who wish to take the floor.  

Ms İffet Deniz Cengiz reiterated her request from the countries on the validation of project documents informally sooner rather than later. 

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Gediz Metin Kocaeli thanked the formulators of the projects and he noted that OGM and his team is ready to contribute to the project implementations as they did at the preparation stage.

Burak Avcı thanked OMO and those who contributed to formulation of the projects and sent Peter Pechacek’s kind regards to the participants. 

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Ahmet Şenyaz highlighted that these projects would not able to solve all management problems of forestry in the countries, but just as a good start to improve collaboration they gathered people under the same roof of natural resource management. He also mentioned that there would be opportunities to expand the project sites and formulate follow-up projects to disseminate good practices on a large scale.   

Aitkul Burkhanov from Kyrgyzstan thanked OMO for the formulation of these projects and noted that they would be pleased to contribute and work with Turkish counterparts.

Afterwards, İsmail Belen gave the floor to Ms. Milena Vukotic from Montenegro. Ms. Vukotic thanked Turkish authorities to include Montenegro in the project activities. Mr. Novika Tmusic from forestry department and Mr. Aleksandar Mijovic from national parks department expressed their pleasure to participate in the project. Also Mr. Tmusic asked how Montenegro will be part of the project. 

Dominique Reeb took the floor and noted that Montenegro, both national parks and forestry department, would be able to benefit from capacity building activities of “improving biodiversity and sustainable forest management project” 

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Mr. Burak Güresinli from General Directorate of Foreign Relations of the MAF thanked OMO for producing two project documents to be implemented under the FTFP. He also mentioned that he looks forward to seeing project implementation in a short time.  

Just after that, İsmail Belen gave the floor to participants from OMO Şefkiye Topçu, Elif Bezci, İsmail Hakkı Güney and thanked them for their great supports to project preparation efforts. 

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Director of Training Center in Antalya Mr. Emin Demir thanked OMO for formulating the IFTC project and expressed that there is an urgent need to increase capacity of IFTC and he would be very pleased to give his focus on how to improve it.  

Ms. Sevilay  Sönmez from ÇEM thanked all participants to project formulation and gave her warm wishes for the success of the projects.  

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Mr. Cuma Uykun from FAO and Ms. Hülya Kılıç from OGM also gave their warm wishes for the success of the project implementations. 

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Finally, İsmail Belen thanked all participants and gave his warm wishes for the success of the projects at their implementation stage. By thanking all participants, he closed the meeting.