As EU (US and Japan) pares (foreign aid) budgets, Turkey and Korea step up aid spending

Aid slips down priority list for cash-strapped traditional donor countries, but emerging powers say they can afford to help

Turkey and South Korea, nations that have watched their own fortunes surge in a generation, are ramping up aid programmes for poor nations at a time when such spending in Europe is under threat, a EurActiv analysis of aid statistics shows.

Sylvia Tiryaki, the vice-chairwoman of Istanbul Kültür University's international relations department, said Turkey was increasingly active in overseas development not just through foreign aid, but via non-governmental and charity organisations.

South Korea almost tripled its spending from 2006 to 2011, easily outpacing any other donor country, while Turkey nearly doubled its overseas aid budget in the same period. Their status as emerging donors follows significant economic growth in the post-cold war period and the countries' rise as regional economic and political powers.

Michael Ward, a senior policy analyst at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED), said South Korea's expanding aid budget stems not just from from its economic might and regional interests, but appreciation for the aid it received in the decades after its devastating civil war in the early 1950s.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/feb/07/eu-pares-budget-turkey-korea-step-up-spending