Background Turkey’s candidature for EU membership has brought with it a commitment to align the country’s policies with the EU environmental acquis and with international agreements and protocols to which the EU is a signatory. Climate change policies have become progressively more significant in Turkey in the past few years, the main milestone being Turkey’s ratification of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). However, civil organisations, industry and public institutions require training and support for networking activities to tackle climate change related issues on a wider scale. Objectives The project’s main objective was to assist Turkey in developing tools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fulfil its obligations towards the UNFCCC. To this effect, the project would aim to build capacities related to climate change within national administration and civil society groups, promote intra-governmental cooperation and increase the awareness of stakeholder groups and strengthen their role in the climate change debate. The project would directly support the development of climate change policies for priority sectors and enhance public participation and access to environmental information. Results The project achieved many of its objectives, especially with regard to training activities. Training seminars were implemented to build technical capacities of experts from government and technical staff of related institutions by means of technical background information as well as comprehensive information about international processes in climate change issue. The training results were assessed positively. The project also supported NGOs awareness and capacities by increasing and strengthening their knowledge about climate change and improving their roles in the climate change debate. Participants were informed about possibilities and ways of participating in the decision-making process at national and international level within the scope of discussion topics, such as “National and international developments in climate change”, “NGOs vision towards climate change” and “partnerships in climate change; are they necessary? and how?”. Another achievement of the project was the launch of a website (www.iklimlerdegisiyor.info), which has become recognised as an important source in Turkish and English of up-to-date information on progress on climate change initiatives at the national and international level and project activities. The project website has been an important tool for dissemination and has hosted the project design documents of the voluntary carbon projects that are in the process of becoming Gold Standard. The final Conference of the project held at the beginning of 2008 was also broadcasted live (on the website: www.reclife.sempozyum.tv), the Turkey’s first climate change activity with a live web coverage. The Conference also created a platform for the evaluation of the outcomes together with the participating Turkish delegation and representatives of Turkish NGOs. Finally, the project carried out sector studies under working groups entitled “Mitigating Climate Change”, “Adaptation to Climate Change”, “Climate Change Regime”. An additional process entitled “Informal Briefing and Discussion Meetings with Turkish High Level Officials on Kyoto Protocol" was also designed to enable high-level decision makers of public institutions of Turkish government to meet informally with senior negotiators of the Swiss Government and the European Commission. Further information on the project can be found in the project's layman report (see "Read more" section).