The Role of Civil Society During Corona Crisis Evaluated At Online Workshop

Civil Pages had held an online meeting titled The Role of Civil Society During Corona Crisis in order to evaluate the effects of the coronavirus crisis on civil society and the post-crisis work of civil society.

The meeting was attended by Liana Varon from the Support Foundation for Civil Society, which continues its activities in different fields in civil society, Talha Keskin from the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), Prof. Dr. Nihat Erdoğmuş from İLKE Foundation,  Assoc. Dr. Itır Erhart from  Adım Adım Platform, Çiğdem Güner from Support To Life Foundation, Pınar Gürer, Ceylan Özünel and Mehmet Ali Çalışkan from YADA Foundation, Rümeysa Çamdereli from Havle Women’s Association and Buket Atlı from the Clean Future Association.

In the meeting held with the moderation of İnanç Mısırlıoğlu, answers were sought for questions such as; what kind of a picture does COVID-19 epidemic and the isolation it had brought create for civil society actors?, what kind of problems will civil society face while struggling against Corona?, what can be done to understand the damage that coronavirus will cause to civil society?, how can collaborations be implemented in civil society?, What issues will come to the fore in the civil field after the coronavirus? in the framework of the observations and evaluations regarding the activities carried out by the participants in the institutions they work in and of other NGOs.

Civil Society Actors During Corona Days

Speaking at the opening of the workshop, Civil Pages Editor-in-Chief Emine Uçak stated that they’ve been trying to make the work and role of civil society visible both in the national and global level during the COVID-19 crisis.

Prof. Dr. Nihat Erdoğmuş from İLKE Foundation had evaluated the period we are in as a process of understanding, interpreting and experiencing the capacity of civil society, and that civil society, like governments and international organizations, was unprepared for the epidemic. Erdoğmuş noted that the Corona crisis has increased the importance of the need to produce information and the issue of information security, thus pointing out to the need for universities and NGOs to conduct data-based studies.

Liana Varon stated that as the Support Foundation for Civil Society, they have negotiated with the organizations in order to determine the current status of the grants and the needs in the field and that the Foundation’s 2020 grant programs strategy was designed to redirect the grants in order to address these needs and to address issues such as poverty and unemployment, by predicting that the economic crisis will continue as well as planning to open a single fund and give focused grants on unemployment and poverty. Another important issue that Varon brought forward was the question of how to put the issues such as refugees and earthquakes that had occupied the agenda of the civilian area in the pre-Corona era forward again.

Pınar Gürer from YADA Foundation pointed out that social and economic conditions will differ along with different problems and demands at the different stages of Corona days, and that there will be a need to raise the individual well-being of civil society actors as well as a need to support them. Gürer also drew attention to the problems that civil society will face and the need for funding resources to sustain themselves financially.

Talha Keskin from IHH said that they stopped or postponed their abroad programs by backdating their Ramadan campaigns as soon as they had realized the urgency of the crisis in Turkey and that they’ve observed that some of the parties which they received individual donations from had begun to request donations. Stating that they have reached the conclusion that the economic crisis will continue as a result of their work in the field, Keskin stated that it is necessary to note that there has been a rapid transformation in the civil field in terms of digitalization and distant working. 

Çiğdem Güner from the Support to Life Foundation stated that, because of the Corona crisis, organizations working in the field such as themselves realized that they need to improve their knowledge on what to do in conditions where it is not possible to work on the field. She emphasized that when they saw some of the refugees’ lack of accessing news concerning the epidemic at the first stage, they focused on informing them on the phone and later on they tried to continue their work by moving to the digital area with information notes, support lines, videos, and visuals.

Assoc. Dr. Itır Erhart, the co-founder of Adım Adım Association which creates large funding sources for NGOs with the marathons they organized, stated that the NGOs who have planned their projects according to the funding resources that would come from the marathons experienced uncertainty due to the canceled marathons and started various activities such as “Stay at Home” and “Move at Home” in the first stage. She noted that an important part of the Adım Adım runners want to support the ones in the field, and that they need the knowledge of NGOs working in the field. 

Buket Atlı from the Clean Future Association highlighted the problem of NGOs turning in upon themselves and upon their own solidarity network in the civil field, and underlined the need for support of NGOs working in the field of health. Atlı said that poverty will be a more important agenda with the economic crisis and that producing one’s own food and city gardens can be brought up as options in view of the predictions that food prices will increase with the delay of agricultural activities.

Mehmet Ali Çalışkan from YADA Foundation reminded the role of civil society as an actor and stated that the aggrievements were now discovered by civil society. He said that the corona crisis caused what is known by the civil society in some areas to become invalid, and that in some areas it would increase the ability of civil society to explore, and that it would test the capacity and skills of civil society.

Focusing on the impact of the corona crisis on women, Rümeysa Çamdereli from Havle Women’s Association pointed out that the house itself became the area of violence and danger for women during the days of Corona. She emphasized the risk that an interim decision made by HSK would allow the “failure of law No. 6284 in Corona conditions”, which is seen as the biggest guarantee of preventing violence against women.

Prominent Issues During Corona Days

Regarding the issues that stand out among the civil field in the corona crisis, Nihat Erdoğmuş said that whether the academy’s post-crisis predictions and the public being more effective in the crisis will narrow the civilian area or not should be studied and he emphasized the importance of the NGOs who cannot be on the field producing more reliable information for policy makers and NGOs. 

Talha Keskin, who stated that civil society became important during the corona crisis in terms of understanding and meeting the needs of people, said that they continue to work in the field as IHH due to the depth of the crisis and that they work in coordination with international institutions such as the UN and the EU as well as institutions in Turkey.

Stating that a situation in which the civil society and the state actor compete in the field of donation during corona days, Liana Varon spoke about the possibility that donations may change radically as the economic crisis inevitably affects the civil domain, which may result in more solidarity or reduced individual donations. An important determination made by Varon was that in order to eliminate the damages on civil society, both donators should change their approach and transform.

Çiğdem Güner reminded that instead of the discussion of who would receive the donations, there are other areas of civil society such as rights advocacy besides aid, and emphasized that there will be more effective collaborations within a certain solidarity network by analyzing the needs of NGOs in different specialties.

According to Mehmet Ali Çalışkan, under Corona conditions, the roles between state actors and civil society actors emerge. He noted that the government’s request for donations indicated a lack of resources and that the problem of legitimacy was not due to donations, but because the lack of funding being hidden and that where the donation would be used is not transparent. According to Çalışkan, NGOs are also obliged to explain to the state what problems they face and to bring creative solutions to the public in combating corona crisis. In addition, in the Corona days, when the state collects donations, civil society can also request its share.

Buket Atlı mentioned about the issues such as the need to strengthen the digital infrastructure of NGOs and the job insecurities of NGO workers during and post Corona crisis. An important point that Atlı stated was that, like the biodiversity in nature, NGOs should think that they will provide diversity of resources within themselves. Atlı pointed out that the discussions regarding the food crisis that is on the agenda due to Corona should be handled with a perception of “nature restoring itself”.

Collaboration Opportunities in Civil Society During Corona Days

On collaborations in civil society during and after Corona days, Nihat Erdoğmuş said that NGOs need to be open to strengthening their way of doing business, to bringing their experiences together, to making more analysis and need more holistic readings. Pınar Gürer noted that cooperation and dialogue on the one hand are getting harder, and that on the other hand we are experiencing a process that prepares the ground for dialogue with new opportunities.

Talha Keskin stated that as IHH, they openly call out to NGOs to think and talk more about capacity and logistics sharing. Liana Varon noted that it would be beneficial for institutions working on different issues to transfer their experiences to each other.