Erasmus+ Vasıtasıyla Öğrenen Örgütü Teşvik Etmek: Türkiye’de Gençlik Kuruluşları

Abstract

Turkey’s full participation in the European Union’s Education and Youth Programmes (i.e., Erasmus+Programme) since 2004 has been one of the ongoing components of Turkey–EU relations. As indicated bythe Director of the National Agency of Turkey in 2021, the programme has supported 700,000 participantsfrom Turkey in 36,000 projects over the course of 17 years. Youth organisations taking part in the learningmobility opportunities of the youth component of the Erasmus+ programme are just one of the programme’smany beneficiaries.In an effort to perform a theoretical analysis of the effects of Erasmus+ on youth organisations in Turkey,this article suggests that owing to their contextual characteristics, youth organisations have the potential totransform into learning organisation stimulated by their involvement in Erasmus+ youth projects. To answerhow Erasmus+ may act as a trigger for this, qualitative data were collected from fifteen youth organisationsfrom Turkey active in the programme and analysed around four components of the integrated model onlearning organisation developed by Örtenblad (2004) (i.e., organisational learning, learning at work, learningclimate and learning structure). The findings suggest that three major factors, namely organisationalconsciousness on learning, participatory mechanisms in the organisation and team-based working structures,are mutually reinforcing characteristics able to help youth organisations transform into learning organisationthrough participation in Erasmus+/YiA training and support activities.