TUSEV, with the support of Republic of Turkey and the EU has organized an International Conference “Strengthening Civil Society Development and Civil Society-Public Sector Dialogue in Turkey” on the 25-26 April 2013, in Istanbul. The participants and speakers came from CSOs, national governments, experts from Turkey and abroad, with focus on the Western Balkans. Cooperation, state of the civil sector and situations in Serbia and Croatia were on the conference agenda as regional examples, and Miljenko Dereta, Member of the Parliament and former ED of CI, together with Igor Vidacek, representative of the Office for cooperation with NGOs of the Republic of Croatia (both former BCSDN Board members), spoke about the above-mentioned topics sharing experiences from Serbia and Croatia. Several panels were also organized to discuss the principles of CSO-Public Sector Relations in Turkey, and the principles of Code of the Conduct between CSOs and the public sector, the expectations from local CSOs. Tanja Hafner Ademi presented the Monitoring Matrix for Enabling Environment for CSDev which was initiated in 2012 together with BCSDN members and partners to explore where are the gaps of cooperation are, to set indicators of the level of CSDev in the countries.
