Disseminating Sphere in Turkey – Kamil Erdem Güler

Kamil Erdem Güler sees publishing the Sphere Handbook in Turkish as just one piece in a bigger and more ambitious picture. Photo: © Bilal Jarekji / The Sphere Project

“I saw members of the Red Crescent team carrying this book around and realised it was some kind of manual,” Güler recalls. “Then I learned that many people in the response units would put the handbook in their luggage when they were deployed to a disaster, would read it and check what they were doing against it. ‘Are we doing the right thing? Are we providing the basic necessities?'”

A young graduate in political science and history, at the time Güler was new to the humanitarian sector and so he decided to find out more about the book. Back in Ankara, he got an English-language version of the  and began reading it. “It was very easy, comprehensive but short,” he recalls.

“The handbook was a starting point. Very soon I also found out about the Sphere Project, this large community of humanitarians around the world,” Güler says. And he discovered something of a paradox. While “the senior staff at the TRC, who are masters of disaster management, knew everything about Sphere standards, it seemed that the Project as such had been somewhat forgotten.”

“At some point, we in our team decided to translate the handbook and interact more with the Sphere Project,” says Güler, who today is executive officer at the strategic development and information management unit in the TRC international programmes department.

With the support of Sphere focal point Zeynep Turkmen Sanduvac from Mavi Kalem, the Turkish-language version of the Sphere Handbook 2011 edition is now in the final stages of production and will be launched in the coming months.

Güler sees publishing the Sphere Handbook in Turkish as just one piece in a bigger and more ambitious picture. “Starting in August this year, we are developing a five-year training strategy on disaster management that will focus first on Red Crescent staff and volunteers, then on humanitarian NGOs and finally also on the government,” he explains.

Sphere standards will be part of such a training programme. “We created a Sphere dissemination team within the TRC and are also translating some Sphere training materials,” Güler adds.

When it comes to training government officials, Güler thinks the focus should be on Sphere Core Standards and Protection Principles rather than on detailed sectoral standards. But things are different when it comes to NGOs.

“Since the Syrian crisis erupted four years ago, a lot of NGOs have arrived to Turkey; they opened offices and began working from there. We are cooperating with those NGOs and would like to make sure they are aware of and work according to Sphere standards,” says Güler.

One way in which the TRC supports humanitarian agencies is bringing aid supplies right up to the Turkish-Syrian border, where Syrians themselves take them across the border. This system (called “zero-point” operations) was devised by the Turkish Government to provide assistance inside Syria.

Besides its involvement in the “zero-point” delivery system, the TRC also provides direct assistance to Syrian refugees in Turkey. “It is estimated that some 2 million Syrians are living in Turkey,” Güler explains, “of which some 270,000 are registered with the Turkish Government and live in camps.”

The TRC acts as an auxiliary to Government-run aid operations in refugee camps within the country. It provides food and non-food items as well as psychosocial support to children. It has also begun to establish community centres to support the urban population.

However, the TRC does not only work within Turkey. “We are involved in relief operations in many places, from Somalia to Gaza and from Pakistan to Nepal,” Güler says. “And we realise that one needs some kind of standards to provide assistance. That’s why we see Sphere not as something ‘nice to have’ but as a necessity.”

[Erdem Güler participated at the .] 

Get to know other Sphere practitioners in the Middle East (more profiles coming up):