Turkish Civil Society and the (EU-Oriented) Europeanization of Turkey until the Mid-2000s

Following the 1980 coup d’état, democratic consolidation and civil society emerged as two primary concerns that set the political agenda in Turkey (Toprak, 1996). Since the persistent political turmoil was in part associated with the ‘weak tradition of civil society’ in Turkey (Ergun, 2010; Öniş, 2003; Toros, 2007), its empowerment was placed huge emphasis.

As the Turkish government applied to the European Community (EC) for ‘full member- ship’ in 19871, Europeanization subsequently figured as another salient issue. In a sense, the democratization process was somehow equated with -the EU-oriented- Europeanization. This mainly comes from that Turkey was expected to fulfill the EU membership requirements, pop- ularly named the ‘Copenhagen Criteria’, as to democracy, rule of law, and human rights. In such an environment, a wide range of civil society organizations, including business associ- ations, women’s organizations, human rights groupings, environmental organizations, youth organizations, and think-tanks, thus strongly backed Europeanization as such (Boşnak, 2016, Göksel&Güneş, 2005; Toros, 2007).

In light of this fact, this paper mainly argues that Turkish civil society organizations acted as a catalyst to facilitate the EU-oriented Europeanization, or ‘EU-ization’ (Diez et al., 2005, 2), of Turkey until the mid-2000s. Based on Diez et al. (2005, 1)’s fourfold Europeanization scheme, this article seeks to examine the impact of Turkish civil society on Europeanization in four main parts, including policy Europeanization, political Europeanization, societal Eu- ropeanization and discursive Europeanization.