Abstract
The southeastern region of Turkey has been undergoing extensive water and human development efforts since the 1970s through the Southeastern Anatolia Regional Development Project, known worldwide by its Turkish acronym—GAP (Guneydogu Anadolu Projesi). This project has its goal the building of 22 dams along the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys that will provide 22% of the nation’s hydroelectric power and irrigate 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres) of land. The region contains some of Turkey’s greatest cultural and social diversity, and is home to significant populations of Turkish nationals of Kurdish and Arabic heritage. Considerable concern exists among the GAP Administration that Turkish development personnel, who, for the most part, are urban-educated in the cities of Ankara or Istanbul and find themselves assigned to work in the southeastern region, lack sensitivity and knowledge about issues related to cross-cultural communication and interaction. An established Memorandum of Understanding between the GAP Administration and Kent State University led to an invitation to provide training in intercultural communication, with the goal of developing training materials designed for use within the region. This article documents the collaborative undertakings that occurred between 2001 and 2002 that included initial training of GAP employees, joint material development based on the culture general assimilator (Cushner and Brislin, 1996), a concurrent training of trainers effort, application of the developed materials by trained GAP employees supported by a grant from the British Embassy, and evaluation of the impact of training by an external agency.