Ministry forges new identity

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Turkey’s Agriculture Ministry is choosing a new logo and creating a new identity to minimize bureaucracy says Minister Eker. AA photo

The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock is creating an institutional identity for the first time in its history by fundamentally changing its structure and attempting to minimize bureaucracy, according to Minister Mehmet Mehdi Eker.

Speaking at the “Restructure and Transformation” launch assembly, Eker likened this change to an MRI scan and said his ministry “saw what had gone wrong.”

“We have produced a strategy from the results of an institutional perspective analysis report. We asked what the problems of our ministry and sector were. We have faced a mirror to see our faults. This is a first in our ministry’s history,” he said.

Eker added that Turkey’s agriculture had been suffering from a number of fundamental failures since the early republican era, claiming that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) had started to fix these problems during its period in government, since 2002. The ministry has sent sociologists and lawyers to every province in Turkey to reach out to producers, farmers and entrepreneurs, he said.

Turkey’s agricultural production is the largest in Europe and the seventh largest in the world, and it reached a total production of 63 billion dollars this year, according to the ministry’s statistics.

Eker said their goal was to increase national agricultural production to 150 billion dollars by 2023, which is the 100th the anniversary of the Turkish Republic’s founding.

“Citizens will access products through a working food audit system. This new mechanism will contribute to their healthy way of living. On the other hand, the ministry will provide effective assistance to investors,” Eker added.

The ministry has also moved to a new building in Ankara, changed its logo, and updated its website, which can now be read by visually impaired people. Eker added that the new website would also be accessible in English.