Dr. M. CEMİL ARSLAN

Generally, it is possible to consider the Town Twinning as the concretion and the spread of cooperation, solidarity, peace and reconciliation culture in the local authorities.

Currently, we are living in the era of cities. The amount of people who are living in the urban areas is increasing cumulatively and it is expected that by 2050 the ratio of people living in urban areas will be the two thirds of the world population. On the other hand, cities are becoming more important actors through the effect of globalization and their political influence is increasing. While cities are the source of many problems such as; climate change and social inequalities that determines the today’s global agenda, the address of the solution also can be found in cities.

Town Twinningis one of the most important tools of learning from each other and learning together alongside its importance for the local diplomacy. It is one of the important roles of local authorities to transform the responsibility of living in the same world into the common good of humanity and a practice of living together with local action policies. Through mutual sharing of local level problems, success and failure stories, good practices, learning from unsuccessful examples, adapting successful practices to local conditions and spreading them thus, increasing the common good is another outcome of the Town Twinning. While Town Twinning mainly serves for this purpose, it also mediates local authorities to develop their institutional capacities and to find external funding. At some point Town Twinning is an important tool for the actualization of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals which is one of the most comprehensive texts that gathered the humanity together on a global scale.