Ministry of Interior to Collect Information of Association Members

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The Ministry of Interior has contacted 114 thousand 218 associations operating in Turkey and demanded that the associations "immediately" inform the ministry about the personal identifying information of 11,1 million association members, including their names, surnames, identity numbers, occupations, educational backgrounds and dates of membership.

As reported by Sinan Tartanoğlu from Cumhuriyet daily newspaper, the Ministry of Interior introduced an amendment to the Regulation on Associations dated 2005 on October 1, 2018.

As per the new amendment, the associations operating in Turkey have been required to inform the Ministry of Interior about the names, surnames, identity numbers and occupations of their members as well as the dates when their memberships were approved or terminated by the associations.

Changes will be done immediately

The new amendment has stipulated that in case a new membership is approved or terminated by an association, the Ministry of Interior shall be informed about the related change in 30 days instead of in the first four months of the year, as it was previously the case.

If an association has a member, who is a citizen of another country, the association has also been obliged to inform the ministry about his or her foreign identification number provided by the Directorate General of Civil Registration and Citizenship Affairs.

The associations, which are not registered in the information system of the Head of Department of Associations called DERBİS, are also stipulated to inform the ministry about the aforementioned information of their members.

The number of associations operating in Turkey

The number of associations that have been currently operating in Turkey is 114 thousand 218. According to the recent information shared by the DERBİS, 13.74 percent of Turkey's population, namely, 11 million 107 thousand 101 people have been members of an association.

While 8 million 798 thousand 752 of them are men, 2 million 308 thousand 349 of them are women.

Before the amendment

Before the related amendment has come into force, the Regulation on Associations required that the executive board chairs of associations inform the local authorities in the first four months of the year.

Accordingly, the associations informed the authorities only about the number of their permanent and honorary members, indicating how many of their members were women and men.

The associations were required to give information only about the names-surnames, identity numbers, places of residence, educational backgrounds and occupations of their founders. (TP/SD)