Cristiano Bee

Youth and active citizenship in Turkey: engagement, participation and emancipation

Abstract This article critically discusses the establishment of active citizenship in Turkey with a specific focus on young people. In particular, we concentrate on the emergence of different strategies regarding civic and political participation in Turkey, by looking at their relationship with civic and political engagement. The scope is to focus on the influence that various factors have in determining patterns of participation. The research and relative results are based on the narratives inherent to two opposite scenarios – that we defined constraints to engagement and participation and patterns of emancipation – that emerged during the interviews with youth activists of NGOs in Turkey.

Youth activists and occupygezi: patterns of social change in public policy and in civic and political activism in Turkey

ABSTRACT The research puzzle that our paper focuses on is the struggle of youth organizations to have their voice heard in public policy processes. We examine the implications of occupygezi in establishing, or not, a new relationship with the political domain and policy makers in Turkey. By drawing on a policy analysis framework, this paper looks at whether occupygezi opened up new windows of opportunities for social and political change for youth activists in Turkey. In doing so, we rely upon the results of a number of in-depth interviews conducted in 2015/16 in Turkey with representatives of youth organizations.

Conventional versus non-conventional political participation in Turkey: dimensions, means, and consequences

This special issue focuses on the emergence of different forms of civic and political activism in Turkey. In doing so, we have taken into account different components of active citizenship and look...

Determinants of young people’s civic and political participation in Turkey

Abstract This special section provides a timely reflection on current debates that are of extreme relevance in order to gain a better understanding of the concepts of citizenship and active citizenship in Turkey, by looking at the determinants of civic and political participation, at the patterns of political and civic mobilization and at the orientations of political behaviour. Its originality stands on the specific focus on young people in comparison to other age groups. The different papers remark upon the importance that the reframing of the notions of citizenship and active citizenship have in the Turkish context along with the determinants that make this remark more relevant than ever.

Between practices and demands: ambiguities, controversies and constraints in the emergence of active citizenship in Turkey

Abstract This article discusses the emergence of active citizenship in Turkey in the light of two working definitions that provide different outcomes in terms of research objectives and aims. On the one side, we define active citizenship as a practice stimulated by public institutions through public policy with the aim of promoting civic and political engagement in order to shape participatory policy processes and ultimately improve the democratic bases of policy-making. On the other side, we define active citizenship as a demand, which becomes particularly important where the civil society expresses certain claims through different means using both traditional and alternative channels of mobilization. In our discussion, we have examined different macro-processes and macro-events that have been key in bringing about different formulations of active citizenship. Using a case study method – where we overview different contextual elements/dynamics that bring to the fore various elements of civic and political engagement and civic and political participation during the past 15 years – we argue that, in a context where the expression of active citizenship is volatile and constrained, further research should take into account different top-down and bottom-up dynamics that bring about different challenges for the study of this subject in Turkey.

Right to public space and right to democracy: The role of social media in Gezi Park

Gezi Park represents a unique example of a mobilization process focused on the right to public space and democracy in Turkey, where forms of bottom up active citizenship have emerged in order to bring forward demands for environmental and social justice. This paper is focused on the role of social media in triggering the protests and in establishing these two central frames. By conducting a discourse analysis of social media content, we provide an overview of the principal narratives that emerged during the days of the Gezi movement. Our article is centrally focused on the adoption of a connective action framework. We argue that social media in occupygezi played the role of mobilizing agent that brought together a heterogeneous mix of participants and offered the chance to personalize the individual grievances that were expressed and promoted by the participants.

Europeanization, Public Sphere, and Active Citizenship

Two central concepts, Europeanization and multilevel governance, are central in order to address the methodological framework of the book. Europeanization is employed in order to study the process of change happening as part of the European integration process. The book acknowledges that Europeanization has two basic distinct dimensions, top-down and bottom-up, to be taken into account. In both cases, Europeanization is to be conceived as a process (Radaelli 2003; Exadaktylos and Radaelli 2009, 2012) and not an outcome. A process that, because of its nature, has a varied impact and it is to be framed in respect to the complex nature of the EU governance system. Because of this, it implies on the one side compliance – whenever there is mutual agreement between policy actors – and on the other side conflict – whenever instead there is dissent or in some cases rejection of European values, norms, procedures and, important for this book, systems of meaning promoted by the EU on specific political concepts, such as the one of active citizenship and its associated components. The framework of the book combines Europeanization with an account of the concept of multilevel governance by putting into particular emphasis the emergence of a networked territorial space made up of political and social struggles where different articulations of discourse are taking place. The discursive turn in public policy analysis is delineated by scholars such as Fischer (2003), that put emphasis on the importance of language in policy-making by focusing on values, discourses, and meanings that are emerging in deliberative processes (see, e.g., Dryzek 2000). This is the core methodological framework adopted in order to study the emergence of discourses and counterdiscourses developed through interaction by institutional and noninstitutional policy actors. On this basis, the chapter introduces the levels of analysis and the research questions that drive the empirical research.

The Gezi Movement Under a Connective Action Framework: Enhancing New Forms of Citizenship via Social Media

This paper seeks to understand the role of social media in the enhancement of participatory practices and behaviors focusing on the case of Gezi protests in Turkey. We focus on the role that social media played in shaping the dynamics that the movement unveiled and which appear to challenge the long standing social and political norms and values of the political establishment in Turkey. In doing so, we look at the posts that appeared on facebook and twitter between June and September 2013. Doing a discourse analysis we categorize them into different streams: dissemination of news within the country and internationally, solidarity from within the country, international solidarity and support, calls for participation, opinionated and oppositional messages. We argue that the Gezi movement is a case of connective action where social media became a tool for bringing to the forefront a form of active citizenship that urges for greatest democracy and civil rights within the country.

Engagement and Participation: Opportunities and Challenges for the Organized Civil Society in the EU

This chapter is focused on the main discourses concerning active citizenship emerging at the supranational level, with particular regard to the organized civil society. The analysis is divided into two parts. At first, I report results from a fieldwork that consists of 25 semi-structured interviews with civil society activist of social NGOs conducted in 2008/2009 in Brussels. This part of the analysis is essential in order to map points of view, values, and challenges in interacting with the European Institutions in the aftermath of the democratic crisis. Next, I present the results of an analysis of policy documents produced by NGOs until up to 2016. The focus here is on the impact of the promotion of active citizenship practices for organizations representing disadvantaged groups (young people, women, migrants, and minorities), along the context of the financial and migration crises. The analysis reveals a number of contentious issues in regard to the current instruments of participation, their effectiveness as well as the actual values and policy priorities of the organizations.

Active Citizenship in Turkey

This chapter is focused on the Turkish development of active citizenship. This is initially presented by taking into account three core categories that are: (1) state/society relations, (2) determinants of reform and political conditions, and (3) characteristics of active citizenship. In line with current literature, I argue that that the definition of different components of active citizenship in the Turkish context is strongly affected by the strong state tradition that still characterizes the political and social context. Even if different processes and dynamics – both internal and external – have emerged throughout the years posing a clear challenge to the Turkish model, the possibilities to exercise participatory behaviors are still rather limited. This results in the fact that active citizenship in Turkey is an important yet volatile concept. The analysis of interviews and policy documents confirms this trend, outlining some of the issues that are still contentious, such as the absence of a legal framework for civil society organizations. Disadvantaged groups, especially, lament the fact that various factors strongly limit their possibilities to play a role in Turkish politics and society and eventually to exercise influence on the policy agenda. The Europeanization process is a central dimension that emerged during the analysis, as an important factor of democratization. However, the recent migration crisis and the EU/Turkey agreement of 2015 have – in the views of the activists that I interviewed – put at stake the validity of such values.