Tunç Soyer, Mayor of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality, continues his intense diplomatic traffic for the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) Culture Summit, which will be held on September 9-11. Mayor Soyer invited the Louisa Vinton, United Nations Development Programme Turkey Resident Representative and her delegation to the Culture Summit.
President Soyer, who first participated in the “Achieving Planetary Social and Economic Resilience” panel, explained the works to be carried out for resilient cities under the moderation of Lotta Tahtinen, Head of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Department at the 4th Local and Regional Governments Forum. Stating that the market economy has become globalised and has become a determinant of the fate of societies to the extent that it never was today, Soyer said that world societies struggling with injustice and poverty also struggle to exist and defend their values due to the global inequality created by market forces.

Soyer continued as follows: “I am very pleased and honoured to share in the United Nations High-level Political Forum that we are the first city in Turkey to prepare the İzmir Voluntary Local Assessment Report (İzmir VLR), which we see as one of the most important steps of this process. This report was prepared with a model that I consider and care about as an ‘urban alliance’, under the leadership of İzmir Sustainable Urban Development network, with the contributions of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality, industry and business world, and non-governmental organisations.”

UN Development Programme welcomes Turkey Resident Representative
Mayor Tunç Soyer hosted Louisa Vinton, United Nations (UN) Development Programme Turkey Resident Representative, and her delegation in the Presidency Office of the Sovereign House. Stating that the idea of localising İzmir’s sustainable development goals made them happy, Louisa Vinton said, “We want to cooperate with İzmir Metropolitan Municipality on various issues. The United Nations Development Programme has two priorities. The first of these is the works on immigrants. We also carry out studies for vulnerable groups living in Turkey in addition to migrants. We want to give them space in business. We have various works for these groups to provide social adaptation at the same time. We want to eliminate the inequalities between different groups.”

Tunç Soyer Participates in the European Committee of the Regions Meeting
Tunç Soyer, Mayor of İzmir Metropolitan Municipality, also participated in the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) Meeting held online. Stating that their main priority in his speech is to increase prosperity in İzmir and to ensure fair distribution of wealth, Mayor Soyer said: “Local governments are the most effective administrative level in identifying urgent social challenges and ensuring resilience. The successful record of cities in pandemic and climate crises shows that municipalities are effective in jointly conducting European action or global action to recover rapidly.”