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Turkey Twinning Project Successfully Completed

News item | 08-08-2013 | 13:53

The European Twinning Project 'Improving the skills of forensic experts' has been completed successfully. The justice ministries of Turkey, Spain, and the Netherlands joined forces in this project. The role of the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) in this project was to improve forensic expertise in specific fields of investigation.

Twinning Projects

The purpose of twinning projects is to assist applicant states of the European Union (EU) in meeting the EU standards (the 'acquis communautaire'). This project, also referred to as the Turkey Twinning Project (TTP), is one of such projects and is aimed to develop forensic expertise in Turkey even further so as to meet the standards of the European Union. The project was launched in April 2011.

European Cooperation

In addition to the cooperating partners from Turkey, Spain, and the Netherlands, experts from Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Poland were also engaged in the project. The project was financed by the EU and the Turkish government.

The NFI’s contribution focused on improving expertise in several fields of investigation, including digital technology, explosives, gunshot residue, fire residue, and DNA analysis. Approximately 45 NFI experts participated in the project.

Considerable attention was furthermore paid to quality assurance and quality management, the intake of requests for investigations, and forensic pathology.

Results

The project achieved all of the following pre-determined objectives:

  • In total, more than a thousand participants attended one or more training sessions relating to a total of 22 different fields of investigation.
  • Each institute of forensic investigation in Turkey has organised four new investigation methods in such a way that they are ready for accreditation in accordance with the ISO-17020 quality standard.
  • A manual for investigation on the crime scene (a ‘best practices manual’) was published and meets the requirements of the ISO-17020 quality standard.
  • Turkish investigators have been trained in the field of quality assurance in accordance with ISO-17020 for investigations on the crime scene. In turn, they can train their colleagues.