WATAN is seeking a Government Relations Officer who will be responsible to manage and oversee all Government Relations requirements for WATAN and coordinate legislative efforts by working with state and local governments.

• Minimum Education Degree: Bachelor’s degree in Law or relevant.
• Minimum 2 years of professional and proven experience in government relations.
• Travel Availability: Ability and willingness to travel domestically.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in Turkish
• Strong written and spoken English.  Arabic is desirable.
• Experience working with provincial- and district-level government authorities, community leaders, and civil society organizations
• Strong networking capability and diplomacy skills
• Experience working in emergency situations
• May need to work after hours or at weekends

Child Protection Policy

Child abuse in all forms is unacceptable to WATAN, which recognizes its responsibility to protect children from harm in all areas of its work. WATAN is committed to ensuring a child-safe environment and is applying a zero-tolerance approach towards any kind of child abuse and exploitation.

Discrimination, Abuse and Harassment Policy

WATAN provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and expressly prohibits and will not tolerate any form of discrimination, abuse, harassment (sexual or otherwise), based upon race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, marital status, citizenship status, disability, or military status.

WATAN employees and related personnel must under no circumstances take part in any form of discrimination, harassment, or abuse (physical, sexual or verbal), intimidation or exploitation, or in any other way infringe the rights of others inside or outside WATAN.

Applications are strongly encouraged from female candidate.

Applications are being reviewed on a rolling basis. WATAN reserves the right to close this advert before the confirmed closing date when we are in receipt of sufficient applications.

Support WATAN Turkey’s liaison and relationship building with the Turkish authorities at a programmatic level.

• Identify key government actors and appropriate approach routes for NGO communications and relationship building 
• Develop and implement standard operating procedures for district and provincial level government liaison
• Map out, and work to build and maintain strong working relationships with, district and provincial level government actors on behalf of WATAN
• Support the Program team in matters pertaining to operational Safety & Security, working with the Government Liaison Coordinator, the Program Manager, and Safety & Security staff
• Regularly coordinate with Liaison staff from other INGOs and national NGOs in order to ensure inter-agency learning
• The GRO may also be occasionally required providing a supporting role in liaison at the national level
• Drafting protocols

Identify, assess and build/maintain relationships with current & potential partner organizations

• List/map and support with the assessment of a number of potential partners to determine their suitability to work with WATAN. Assessments will include the analysis of  mutual values, principles, governance, structure, accountability and management systems and should be undertaken through use of agreed, standardized tools.
• Supported by the Program Manager, Partnership Coordinator and Program Quality Manager, lead the development of MOUs and partnership agreements
• Follow up with partners on MOUs and reporting, in liaison with the Grants Officer
• Support the PMs to regularly review the partnerships, and ensure that any issues or 
• disputes are resolved in a timely manner
• Support the PMs to communicate WATAN’s policies and procedure, arranging training and induction as required
• Provide translation in meetings where necessary

Coordinate Capacity Building of Partners

• With the Program Manager, support the Partnership Coordinator to undertake review meetings with partners, with particular attention given to the relationship aspects of  partnership collaboration.
• With the support of the Program Manager and Program Quality Manager and under the  supervision of the Partnership Coordinator, review organizational assessments of partners or conduct new assessments and develop appropriate time bound development work plans
• Support the Partnership Coordinator to develop a capacity building framework and action plans with full participation of partners
• Establish links and build relationships with organizational capacity development providers inside Turkey including consulting firms, government institutions, NGO support centers and universities.

Other Program-related Duties

• Maintain a database of refugee numbers in Turkey, regularly updating this with new information from reliable sources
• Assist with tasks relating to program development, including assessments
• Support with tasks relating to visitors from the WATAN Confederation or donor representatives
• Represent WATAN at NGO coordination meetings if required.
• Produce monthly reports on liaison, coordination, and partnership activities for dissemination within the Program Team and the Senior Management Team.
• Participate with the team to provide needed documents and papers for auditing and inspection from the state authorities.  
• Follow up all the works with the legal accountant
• Submission of Work permit applications to the System.
• Organizing department newsletter, project collaborations
• Keeping records in a duly, transparent, and accessible manner
• Submission and follow up cross border permissions on regular basis.
• Other duties assigned by the line manager.