The Diplomat
The Spanish Cooperation and the Spanish Ministry of Interior have collaborated with the Turkish authorities, through the European Union, in a project for the prevention of radicalization and terrorism in the country’s prisons.
The twinning project with Turkey, funded by the EU and managed by the Spanish public entity International and Ibero-American Foundation for Public Administration and Policy (Fundación Internacional y para Iberoamérica de Administración y Políticas Públicas, FIIAPP), concluded this week after two and a half years of work to adapt Turkish prisons to European and international standards. In addition, during the implementation of the project, work has been carried out to establish measures to prevent radicalization and terrorism in Turkish prisons, for which purpose the training of professionals working in the penitentiary field has been promoted and the tools for analyzing the risk within the institution have been strengthened.
To achieve these objectives, the FIIAPP worked directly with the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions, which reports to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior and whose specialists worked side by side with their counterparts in the Turkish General Directorate of Prisons, a body belonging to the Ministry of Justice. Other specialists from the rest of Europe also provided advice.
Twinning projects are an instrument of the European Commission to help candidate countries or countries close to the EU to adapt their legislation or institutional framework to the needs of the European Union. The twinning programs were launched in May 1998 and the FIIAPP, a state public sector foundation that is part of the Spanish Cooperation as a whole, is the body in charge of managing the participation of Spanish administrations in the projects.
According to the FIIAPP, the Turkish specialists have been very satisfied with the work carried out and with all the material and information gathered through the different trainings, as they have received recommendations for alignment with international and EU standards. During the project, training activities have been carried out and several guides have been published, including a code of ethics for prison system staff from a human rights approach and a guide to ethical standards.
