DOCUMENTS Country Report Expertise Centre COUNTRY REPORT 2006 - 2007

1.4 Accreditation

The Turkish accreditation body, TÜRKAK has its roots in the 1990’s.The drafting of the law on TÜRKAK started already in 1995. It was passed through parliament and published in 1999. The new accreditation body TÜRKAK became functional and could accept applications in 2001. In 2002, when the present project was launched, TÜRKAK had accredited very few conformity assessment bodies and had almost no acceptance on the national arena. On the international arena, TÜRKAK was hardly known to exist. Today TÜRKAK has accredited more than 150 conformity assessment bodies and is coping with a substantial number of applications. TÜRKAK is a full member of both the European Accreditation Cooperation (EA) and International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC). It has applied for full membership in International Accreditation Forum (IAF). It has, during 2006, signed the EA multilateral agreement of mutual acceptance within the fields of testing and calibration laboratory accreditation, inspection body accreditation and accreditation of certification bodies for quality management systems (QMS).

TÜRKAK has during 2006 also signed the ILAC mutual recognition arrangement for the accreditation of calibration and testing laboratories. TÜRKAK participates regularly in the committees and general assembly meetings of EA and ILAC. In the national arena, TÜRKAK is an accepted partner of the notifying authorities, helping them assess candidate notified bodies to the requirements of the relevant directives and standards. In the national voluntary arena, TÜRKAK is now a respected actor of the quality infrastructure and the fact that it has signed the EA MLA and the ILAC MRA will further increase its credibility and respect both in the national and the international arena.