ISBN : 9782296129740
HOW EUROPE AFFECTS: EUROPEANIZATION OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN TURKEY
Alper Kaliber1
Abstract
The central aims of this article are to problematise and redefine the phenomenon of
Europeanization and to develop a fuller account of the European impact on politically
mobilised civil society in Turkey. It argues that the impact of Europeanization is heavily
conditioned by the extent of and the ways in which Europe is used as a context by domestic
actors to promote their political/social projects. Therefore, to get a better insight to the multilayered
impact of Europeanization on Turkish civil society, one needs to look at how Europe
is politically and discursively constructed and used by civil society organizations (CSOs). This
study focuses on CSOs particularly vocal on the Kurdish question and political
Islam/secularism debates and on their distinctive perceptions of EU-Europe. It also argues
that a clear analytical distinction is needed between EU-isation as EU-induced process of
legislative, institutional and policy engineering and Europeanization as a wider socio-political
and normative context