Drawing on interviews with Civil Society organizations and in conjunction with an examination of EU Civil Society Policy and the legal and institutional environment in Turkey this book examines EU policies on Turkish Civil Society organizations and highlights the significant constraints and limited impacts of these policies.

Do NGOs strengthen Turkey's efforts at Europeanization and democratization or do they use EU funding to serve other interests?This book offers a critical investigation of the relationship between Turkish NGOs and the European Union (EU) and a nuanced assessment of the opportunities and limitations to fashioning social change by funding NGOs.

This book focuses on the hidden but ever-present civil society dimension of the EU’s policies towards Turkey and uncovers the pitfall of EU–Turkey relations. It establishes the growing depoliticization of Turkish civil society (in contrast to what the EU’s policies aimed for) and engages with the questions of why and how Turkish civil society depoliticized. It discusses how Turkey’s retreating democracy, and the intense polarization in Turkish political and social life make rights-based activism more difficult. Finally, this book investigates what implications Turkish civil society’s depoliticization bears for EU–Turkey relations, reveals the diminishing leverage of the EU’s policies and discusses how this reflects on Turkey’s already closing civic space. It explains why and how EU-Turkey relations deteriorated over the last decade, examines the current stalemate, and discusses why civil society matters. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students in the field of EU–Turkey relations, Turkish studies and civil society studies as well as more broadly to NGOs, European studies and politics, and International Relations.

The accession of Turkey to the EU presents a fascinating case study for all those with an interest in europeanisation. Officially recognised as a candidate for full membership in 1999 Turkey's negotiations with the EU have been protracted and highly controversial. Turkey and the European Union: Processes of Europeanisation offers a coherent and focussed account of Turkey's recent relations and accession negotiations with the EU. Europeanisation as an explanatory tool is used to review how the EU has successfully induced change in Turkish policies and institutions whilst careful analysis is also conducted into where europeanisation has failed and explores how it may even have inadvertently contributed to forming a backlash against accession. Authoritative local and International contributors provide in-depth analysis as to why the process has had such a varied impact across a range of policies and institutions and ask, given the high costs of joining the EU and decreasing incentives, if europeanisation can still exert an influence in the future. Despite Turkey's unique geographical and political position between East and West the relationship with the EU is not a case sui generis. This book offers valuable insights on the effectiveness of europeanisation for all those within and without the framework of the European Union.

The EU, Turkey, and their common neighborhood are changing rapidly and deeply, exposing the European-Turkish relationship to new challenges and opportunities in diverse policy areas such as energy, migration, citizenship and civil society. This collective volume explores how the EU and Turkey can enhance their cooperation in these policy domains and so aims to contribute to a comprehensive discussion on shaping a common Turkish-European future in the world.

This book provides a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of improving EU-Turkey relations on Turkish political culture. It also comprises a succinct overview of Turkey's most reaching reform process since Ataturk.

This comprehensive edited volume conceptually develops the notion of ‘de-Europeanisation’ as an important development in the literature on Europeanisation, and applies it specifically to the case of Turkey. ‘De-Europeanisation’ is defined as the loss or weakening of the EU/Europe as a normative/political context and as a reference point in domestic settings and national public debates of both candidate and member countries. ‘De-Europeanisation’ manifests itself in two basic ways: as the weakening of the appeal and influential capacity of European institutions, policies, norms and values, leading to a retreat of EU/ Europe as a normative/political context for society and politics in a candidate/member state; and as growing scepticism and indifference in a given society towards the EU/Europe, risking the legitimacy of the EU/Europe as a reference point in cases even where reform is incurred. Using this concept, the authors analyse the diminishing impact of the EU in Turkish governance and politics after the opening of accession negotiations in October 2005. The relevance of ‘de-Europeanisation’ is investigated through ten chapters focusing on key policy areas including education, migration, democracy, the rule of law and media freedoms, and a number of key actors including civil society organisations, political parties and political leaders. This book was originally published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.