Participation Task Forces are innovative because:

• Elected municipal councillors, appointed municipal officials, and members of citizens' assemblies (CAs) do not come or work together on a systematic basis. Establishment of the PTF allowed these different representatives from the same municipality to hear each other's approaches to participatory decision-making, learn each other's priorities, and discuss ideas on improving participation.
• Representatives of different metropolitan district municipalities in the same province, especially those with different political party majorities in their councils, do not usually come or work together on participatory decision-making. Bringing three pilot PTFs from different municipalities created a highly productive platform for exchanging experiences.
• The close co-operation of the PTFs with the UMT Team allowed for the creation of mutual capacity building channels that create possibilities for further interaction and collaboration.

As of the date of submission, majority of the project activities have been successfully completed. The PTFs successfully took part in all meetings, and finalised their participatory policy recommendations on paper. The next step is for each PTF to determine the proper process of submitting the participatory policy recommendation to their municipal council. On 18 October 2022, a Public Outreach Conference was organised at the Union of Municipalities of Türkiye (UMT) to disseminate the project results to a wider audience. This conference allowed publicly introducing the Procedural Participation Module for future use by UMT. Lastly, a brief survey is being conducted in October 2022 with the UMT Team and the PTFs to have a broad assessment of the overall project impact. In line with the results of the survey, a sustainability strategy will be delivered to UMT to ensure further commitment in broadening the project's impact after its termination.

VNG International designed and implemented the project in partnership with UMT. The project was funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands to Türkiye. Municipality of Etimesgut, Municipality of Keçiören, and Municipality of Yenimahalle took part in the project as pilots, and ensured participation of elected councillors and appointed officials in PTFs. Citizens' Assembly (CA) of Etimesgut, CA of Keçiören, and CA of Yenimahalle ensured CSO participation as the other PTF members.

Establishment of PTFs benefited:

• Pilot municipalities in brining participatory decision-making higher on the agenda of the councillors and municipal officials.
• Pilot CAs in exchanging their past experiences, learning from each other, and broadening their perception of participatory decision-making.
• UMT in improving technical capacity on procedural participation, and closely collaborating with their members on participatory decision-making processes, methods, and tools.

• UMT Team of Trainers specialising on procedural participation established from 8 officials from different departments, cultivating intra-institutional exchanges.
• 3 pilot municipalities selected from among the metropolitan district municipalities of Ankara. Each one of the 3 pilot municipalities has a council majority from a different political party, leading to horizontal exchange of experiences on and approaches to public participation in local decision-making.
• PTFs established in 3 pilot municipalities to experiment for the first time a three-dimensional participatory process with elected municipal councillors, appointed municipal officials, and CA members.
• Baseline survey conducted.
• Three-day governance workshops organised on good governance and public participation.
• 72-hour training of trainers programme delivered for UMT.
• PTFs developed participatory policy recommendations.
• Procedural Participation Module developed for UMT Academy.
• Survey on overall impact being conducted.

The main challenge in making PTFs operational was time availability of the stakeholders. All representatives involved in implementation carried out the project related tasks on top of their already existing full-time responsibilities. To overcome this challenge, the previously envisaged one-day meetings were redesigned as intensive half-day meetings.

Another important challenge was working through the balances of power among the different stakeholders. From the start, being in the same room with UMT representatives, local politicians, municipal officials, and civil society representatives triggered self-defensive impulses among the participants. However, the open and interactive atmosphere created throughout the meetings as the project progressed, encouraged effective dialogue that led to the formation of an efficient forum of exchange based on mutual trust.

• Existence of the enabling legislation (Regulation of Citizens' Assemblies) provided the necessary legal basis.
• A committed owner of the process is necessary (such as the UMT in the case of this project).
• Political commitment on the side of the municipality, both at the highest decision-making level, and also at the level of the individual council members brings the necessary motivation and momentum.
• Dedicated members of the municipal offices, and the civil society representatives involved in the CAs with their direct and constant contact with citizens ensures focus to remain on the community.
• Human resources, particularly interest and time availability for systematically working together in a task force is key.
• The more systematically the various stakeholders meet to interact with one another, the higher probability that a mutual trust atmosphere is created.

The PTF approach can be replicated to strengthen participatory processes at the local, regional, and national levels. The formula is bringing together elected decision-makers, appointed practitioners, and civil society representatives in a small task force (8-12 members) to work on a participatory proposal that they will themselves decide. The overall positive impact of the process is independent from the actual outcome.

UMT could continue using the method with other municipalities, and accumulate good practice examples from different iterations. Similarly, there is no reason for pilot municipalities to abolish their already existing PTFs at the end of the project as they can continue working on new participatory proposals in the same way.

The biggest lesson learned for all the stakeholders involved in the project was that public participation is a much more complicated and technically demanding process than it generally seems. In addition, the exchanges that took place throughout the project between different stakeholders allowed each of them to see that there are many different angles to participatory decision-making that they alone would not be able to perceive or consider. Lastly, it is observed by all stakeholders that although there is one Regulation on Citizens' Assemblies, there are many different ways in which the CAs in different municipalities operate and interact with their municipal management and communities. Constant communication and collaboration across different levels once again proved to be a very effective approach to consolidating one's own experiences, and improving already existing good practices.