ALEPPO, Syria — Turkey’s Kilis municipality held training sessions for a number of Syrian engineers in the Euphrates Shield area in the countryside of Aleppo from Aug. 3-6 at the headquarters of the Azaz local council. The training was held in cooperation with the Syrian Engineers Organization for Reconstruction and Development and the Shafaq Sham nongovernmental organization.

Twenty-five Syrian engineers from the Euphrates Shield area received free training in various fields, including the development of networks for sewage, water and electricity and methods of developing the municipal services sector. The training aims to transfer the expertise of the Turkish engineers in the municipal sector to Syrian engineers and contribute to the Euphrates Shield area’s future development with the support of the Turkish government.

A number of Turkish engineers supervised the training program. The director of the cultural center in Kilis municipality, Mahmut Selcuk, was the general supervisor of the training course held in Azaz. Assisting him were Kilis' planning director, Murat Bilecen, who is an architect, Kilis' project manager Huseyin Azmi Dokuzluoglu, who is a mechanical engineer, and Kilis' water director Begum Bostanci.

In addition to lectures given in Turkish and interpreted into Arabic, lectures were also given in Arabic by two Syrian engineers, Abdullah al-Sagheer, the head of the Syrian Engineers Organization for Reconstruction and Development, and Mohammad Wisho, a member of the organization's board of directors.