Green Crescent was established a century ago, in 1920, in İstanbul to struggle against addiction. Under the leadership of Prof. Mazhar Osman Uzman, our valuable intelligentsia foresaw the threat of addiction 100 years ago, and launched efforts to create a healthy society and to promote healthy lifestyles, free of addiction.

Green Crescent’s initial efforts were directed toward alcohol, but in time, tobacco, substances, gambling and, more recently, technology addictions were added to the scope of our works. In 2014, we added rehabilitation services to our portfolio, complementing our protective and preventive works.

We provide free psychological and social support to those facing problems with tobacco, alcohol, substances, gambling and the Internet addiction through our Green Crescent Counseling Centers, which operate in several locations in Turkey. At the same time, we provide support to the families and relatives of addicts by including them in the process, aiding them in the recovery of their disrupted lives.

We implement the largest and widest reaching addiction training program in Turkey – the Addiction Prevention Training Program of Turkey – in cooperation with the Ministry of National Education, aiming to raise the awareness of students and adults of the dangers of addiction. To this end, we reach out to approximately 10 million students and 3 million adults every year. Furthermore, we strive to prevent the onset of addictions before they occur in schools through our School-based Addiction Intervention Program, aimed at students that use or have tried cigarettes, alcohol or substances. We carry out many activities to ensure our most valuable assets – our children – are kept away from addictions in schools through the Healthy Generation and Healthy Future Contest and the My Club is Green Crescent Project.

While transferring 100 years of knowledge and experience through Country Green Crescents to the world, we continue to disseminate our struggle against addiction to a wider community in our country, and strengthening our organization.

We adopted the EFQM Model in 2013 with the confidence in planned and systematic work for success in the struggle against addiction. Applying the model of excellence developed by the European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM), we have implemented all our activities within the framework of the strategic plans we have prepared, becoming a civil society organization with a voice in the national and international arena. As a result of our improvement and development works, we became the first civil society organization in Turkey to receive an EFQM Five Star Recognition in the Competency in Excellence Awards in 2019.

All of our activities in our struggle against addiction are carried out using scientific and evidence-based methods. We aim to increase the number of scientific studies and contents through the efforts of the Green Crescent Scientific Board.

We prepare scientific publications for the academic community and implementers in the field of addiction, create sources of accurate and reliable information related to the prevention of addiction for public, and publish various journals, books and reports to this end.

As Green Crescent, we put maximum effort into the development of strong collaborations to ensure our activities and services reach our specific target groups, to expand the civil society network, and to gain a voice and maintain our position as an opinion leader in the national and international arenas.