The Statistical, Economic, Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC) participated in the Peer Review (PR) Information Meeting organized by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) at its Headquarters in Ankara, Turkey on 13 October 2015. The Centre was represented by Mrs. Zehra Zumrut Selcuk, Director of Statistics and Information Department, and Dr. Atilla Karaman, Senior Researcher, Statistics and Information Department.

The PR Information Meeting commenced with the speech of Mr. Enver Taştı, Vice-President of TurkStat, in which he summarized the general road map during a PR process. Mr. Taştı also underlined the benefits that the National Statistical Systems (NSSs) could obtain by receiving the list of improvement actions from the PR reports. Following Mr. Taştı, Ms. Şennur Onur, Head of TurkStat International Relations Department, took the floor and briefed the participants about the agenda of the PR visit for Turkey to take place on 3-6 November 2015. Ms. Onur’s speech was followed by a presentation on the details of the European Statistics Code of Practice (CoP) and the PR process.

The CoP was adopted by the European Commission as a recommendation in 2005 and revised in 2011. The CoP sets the standard for developing, producing and disseminating European statistics and is based on 15 principles concerning the institutional environment, statistical processes and outputs. It builds upon a common European Statistical System (ESS) and aims to ensure that statistics produced within the ESS are not only relevant, timely and accurate but also comply with principles of professional independence, impartiality and objectivity. A set of indicators of good practice for each of the 15 principles provides a reference for measuring the implementation of the Code.

PR studies have been launched by Eurostat in order to monitor the implementation of these principles within the NSSs of both the EU Member Countries and Enlargement Countries. The First Round of Peer Reviews was carried out for the ESS countries and Eurostat in the period from 2006 to 2008 and for the EU Enlargement Countries in the period from 2010 to 2013. The PR for the TurkStat was carried out in 2011.

Eurostat has started to implement the Second Round of Peer Reviews in 2014 in the ESS countries and the process was completed by June 2015. In the Strategic Information Meeting, carried out in Luxembourg on 18 March 2015, Turkey was chosen as a pilot country for the Second Round of Peer Reviews for Enlargement Countries. The PR visit for Turkey will be carried out on 3-6 November 2015.

Different from the First Round, the Second Round of Peer Reviews is comprised of three questionnaires including Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ), Questionnaire on Coordination (QoC), and Light Self-Assessment Questionnaire (LiSAQ). Following the questionnaire phase, public authorities within Turkish Statistical System, non-governmental organisations, academicians, international organisations and media representations will participate meetings on 3-6 November 2015. The objectives of these meetings are to evaluate the cooperation activities of TurkStat with the stakeholders and users, to monitor the coordination role of TurkStat within the Statistical System and to present the perception of TurkStat by the users and media.

The Statistics and Information Department of SESRIC will be taking part on the third day of the PR visit as an international stakeholder of TurkStat.

For more information on the Eurostat’s PR process, please visit: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/quality/peer-reviews