AB'nin Türkiye'deki Sivil Toplum Örgütlerine Finansal Desteği: Gezi Süreci Sonrası Siyasi Alanın Daralması mı?

Year 2022, , 486 - 518, 09.10.2022

Sinem Bal

https://doi.org/10.53376/ap.2022.17

Cited By: 2

Abstract

Bu çalışma, Gezi sonrası alternatif ittifaklara dayalı ve devletin aşırı anti-demokratik gücüne karşı duran sivil katılıma dair AB’nin tavrını incelemektedir. Çalışma, Gramşiyan bir perspektiften yararlanarak protestolar öncesi Türkiye’deki sivil toplumun AB ideolojik rızasının işareti olan finansal destekler yardımıyla siyasal olarak sosyalleştiğinin altını çizer. Böylelikle, AB sivil organik aydınlarla yapılacak liberal demokratik işbirliğine odaklanmış ve bunu sivil toplumun sosyal ve siyasal dönüşümünün itici gücü olduğu kanaatine dayanmıştır. Ne var ki, her ne kadar Gezi sonrası sivil toplum örgütlerinin katalizör rolü daha da güçlenmiş ve yeni karşı hegemonik siyasi alan olsalar da Türkiye’nin AB’den normatif uzaklığı ve mülteciler üzerinden AB ve Türkiye arasında kurulan pragmatik bağ AB’nin Türkiye’deki hak temelli sivil toplum örgütleri ile arasındaki finansal ilişkinin azalmasına yol açtığı iddia edilmektedir.

Keywords

AB Fonları, Sivil Toplum, AB-Türkiye İlişkileri, Gezi Protestoları, Gramsci

EU Financial Assistance to Civil Society in Turkey: Shrinking the Political Space in the Post-Gezi Process?

Abstract

This study investigates the EU’s stance on post-Gezi civic engagement, which is based on alternative alliances and against the anti-democratic extremes of state power. Using a Gramscian perspective, the paper underlines the fact that before the protests, Turkey’s civil society had been politically socialized by the help of EU financial assistance as a sign of an ideology of consent. That is, the EU has focused on liberal-democratic cooperation with civic organic intellectuals, based on the conviction that civil society is the engine for social and political transformation. However, even though civil society organizations have strengthened their catalysing role and become a new counter-hegemonic political space since the Gezi protests, it is argued that Turkey’s normative distance from the EU and the pragmatic links between the EU and Turkey over refugees have led the EU to reduce its financial relationships with Turkey’s rights-based civil society.

Keywords

EU Funds, Civil Society, EU-Turkey Relations, Gezi Protests, Gramsci

References

• Agustín, Óscar García, and Martin Bak Jørgensen (2016), “Introduction” Agustín, Óscar García, and Martin Bak Jørgensen (Ed.), Solidarity without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration: and Civil Society Alliances, (London: Pluto Press): 3-20.
• Akçalı, Emel (2018), “Do Popular Assemblies Contribute to Genuine Political Change? Lessons from the Park Forums in Istanbul”, South European Society and Politics, 23 (3): 323-340.
• Altınörs, Görkem and Ümit Akçay (2022), “Authoritarian Neoliberalism, Crisis, and Consolidation: The Political Economy of Regime Change in Turkey”, Globalizations, 19 (7): 1029-1053.
• Arslanalp, Mert and Deniz T. Erkmen (2020), “Repression without Exception: A Study of Protest Bans during Turkey’s State of Emergency (2016-2018)”, South European Society and Politics, 25 (1): 99-125.
• Atalay, Zeynep (2022), “The Mutual Constitution of Illiberal Civil Society and Neoauthoritarianism: Evidence from Turkey”, Current Sociology, 70 (3): 338–357.
• Axyonova, Vera and Fabienne Bossuyt (2016), “Mapping the Substance of the EU’s Civil Society Support in Central Asia: From Neo-liberal to State-led Civil Society”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 49 (3): 207-217.
• Aydın-Düzgit, Senem and Alper Kaliber (2016), “Encounters with Europe in an Era of Domestic and International Turmoil: Is Turkey a de-Europeanising Candidate Country?”, South European Society and Politics, 21 (1): 1-14.
• Bagic, Aida (2004), “Talking about ‘Donors’: Women's Organizing in Post-Yugoslav Countries”, Gould, Jeremy and Henrik Secher Marcussen (Eds.), Ethnographies of Aid – Exploring Development Texts and Encounter, Occasional Paper 24 (Roskilde: International Development Studies, Roskilde University Centre): 199-226.
• Bal, Sinem (2019) “Clash of Norms: The Limits of EU’s Normative Power in Gender Equality”, Marmara Journal of European Studies, 27 (1): 123-144.
• Bee, Cristiano and Ayhan Kaya (2017), “Between practices and demands: ambiguities, controversies and constraints in the emergence of active citizenship in Turkey”, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 17 (3): 301-324.
• Bee, Cristiano and Stavroula Chrona (2017), “Youth Activists and Occupygezi: Patterns of Social Change in Public Policy and in Civic and Political Activism in Turkey”, Turkish Studies, 18 (1): 157-181.
• Bilgiç, Ali (2018), “Reclaiming the National Will: Resilience of Turkish Authoritarian Neoliberalism after Gezi”, South European Society and Politics, 23 (2): 259-280.
• Cebeci, Münevver (2016), “De-Europeanisation or Counter-Conduct? Turkey’s Democratisation and the EU”, South European Society and Politics, 21 (1): 119-132.
• Cox, Robert W. (1999), “Civil Society at the Turn of the Millennium: Prospects for an Alternative World Order”, Review of International Studies, 25 (1): 3-28.
• Çarkoğlu, Ali. (2014), “Plus ça Change Plus C'est la Même Chose: Consolidation of the AKP's Predominance in the March 2014 Local Elections in Turkey”, South European Society and Politics, 19 (2): 169-192.
• David, Isabel and Gabriela Anouck Côrte-Real Pinto (2017), “The Gezi Protests and the Europeanization of the Turkish Public Sphere”, Journal of Civil Society, 13 (3): 307-322.
• Dikici Bilgin, Hasret (2009), “Civil society and state in Turkey: A Gramscian Perspective”, McNally, Mark and John Schwarzmantel (Eds.), Gramsci and Global Politics: Hegemony and Resistance (New York: Routledge): 107-118.
• DG Enlargement Guidelines for EU support to civil society in enlargement countries: 2014-2020, https://ab.gov.tr/files/ardb/evt/1_avrupa_birligi/ 1_6_raporlar/1_3_diger/enlargement/Guidelines_for_EU_support_to_civil_society_in_enlargement_countries_2014-2020.pdf (15.03.2021).
• Doyle, Jessica L. (2016), “Civil society as Ideology in the Middle East: A Critical Perspective”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 43 (3): 403-422.
• Ergun, Ayça (2010), “Civil society in Turkey and Local Dimensions of Europeanization”, European Integration, 32 (5): 507-522.
• Ertuğrul, Kürşad and Öznur Akcalı Yılmaz (2018), “The Otherness of Turkey in European Integration”, Turkish Studies, 19 (1): 48-71.
• European Parliament (2013, 13 June), European Parliament Resolution of 13 June 2013 on the Situation in Turkey (2013/2664(RSP), https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/7f37f4c1-d6e0-11e5-8fea-01aa75ed71a1 (15.03.2021).
• European Union Commission (2001), “European Governance a White Paper”, COM (2001) 428 final, https://ab.gov.tr/files/ardb/evt/1_avrupa_birligi/ 1_6_raporlar/1_1_white_papers/com2001_white_paper_european_governance.pdf (10.05.2021).
• European Union Commission (2005), “Civil Society Dialogue between the EU and Candidate Countries”, SEC (2005) 891, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=LEGISSUM:e50022 (10.05.2021).
• Fonseca, Marco (2016), Gramsci’s Critique of Civil Society: Towards a New Concept of Hegemony (New York: Routledge).
• Füle, Stefan (2013, 7 June), “EU-Turkey Bound Together”, Conference of Ministry for EU Affairs ‘Rethinking Global Challenges: Constructing a Common Future for Turkey and the EU’, SPEECH/13/517, Istanbul, Turkey.
• Gençoğlu-Onbaşi, Funda (2016), “Gezi Park Protests in Turkey: From ‘Enough is Enough’ to Counter-Hegemony?”, Turkish Studies, 17 (2): 272-294.
• Gramsci, Antonio (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence & Wishart) (ed. and trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith).
• Gramsci, Antonio (2015), Southern Question (New York: Via Folios) (ed. and trans. P. Verdicchio).
• Gürcan, Efe Can and Efe Peker (2014), “Turkey’s Gezi Park Demonstrations of 2013: A Marxian Analysis of the Political Moment”, Socialism and Democracy, 28 (1): 70-89.
• Gürcan, Efe Can and Efe Peker (2015), “A Class Analytic Approach to the Gezi Park Events: Challenging the ‘Middle Class’ Myth”, Capital & Class, 39 (2): 321-343.
• İçduygu, Ahmet (2011), “Interacting Actors: The EU and Civil Society in Turkey”, South European Society and Politics, 16 (3): 381-394.
• Kaya, Ayhan and Raffaele Marchetti (2014), “Europeanization, Framing Competition and Civil Society in the EU and Turkey”, Global Turkey in Europe II, Working Paper 06.
• Kaya, Ayhan (2016), “Europeanization of Civil Society in Turkey: Legacy of the #Occupygezi Movement”, Turkish Studies, 18 (1): 125–156
• Ketola, Markus (2011), “EU Democracy Promotion in Turkey: Funding NGOs, Funding Conflict?”, The International Journal of Human Rights, 15 (6): 787-800.
• Ketola, Markus (2012a), “A Gap in the Bridge?’: European Union Civil Society Financial Assistance in Turkey”, The European Journal of Development Research, 24 (1): 89-104.
• Ketola, Markus (2012b), “EU Support for NGOs in Turkey is Not a Short-Cut to Democratic Change”, LSE European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) Blog.
• Ketola, Markus (2013), Europeanization and Civil Society: Turkish NGOs as Instruments of Change? (London: Palgrave Macmillan).
• Kubicek, Paul (2011), “Political Conditionality and European Union's Cultivation of Democracy in Turkey”, Democratization, 18 (4): 910–931.
• Kurki, Milja (2011a), “Governmentality and EU Democracy Promotion: The European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights and the Construction of Democratic Civil Societies”, International Political Sociology, 5 (4): 349-366.
• Kurki, Milja (2011b), “Human Rights and Democracy Promotion: Reflections on the Contestation in, and the Politico-Economic Dynamics of Rights Promotion”, Third World Quarterly, 32 (9): 1573-1587.
• Luciani, Laura (2021), “The EU’s Hegemonic Interventions in the South Caucasus: Constructing ‘Civil’ Society, Depoliticising Human Rights?”, Cooperation and Conflict, 56 (1): 101-120.
• Morton, Adam (2007), Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy (London: Pluto Press).
• Morvaridi, Behrooz (2013), “The Politics of Philanthropy and Welfare Governance: The case of Turkey”, The European Journal of Development Research, 25 (2): 305-321.
• Muehlenhoff, Hanna L. (2014), “Funding Democracy, Funding Social Services? The European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights in the Context of Competing Narratives in Turkey”, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 16 (1): 102-118.
• Öner, Selcen (2014), “Internal Factors in the EU’s Transformative Power Over Turkey: The Role of Turkish Civil Society”, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 14 (1): 23–42.
• Özen, Hayriye (2015), “An Unfinished Grassroots Populism: The Gezi Park Protests in Turkey and Their Aftermath”, South European Society and Politics, 20 (4): 533-552.
• Reuters (2013, 12 June), “EU Worried by Violence in Turkey, Calls for Inquiries”, https://reuters.com/article/us-turkey-protests-eu-idUKBRE95B11020130612 (10.05.2021).
• Rumelili, Bahar and Büke Boşnak (2015), “Civil Society and Europeanization: Yardsticks of Assessment”, Tekin Ali and Aylin Güney (Eds.), The Europeanization of Turkey: Polity and Politics (New York: Routledge): 127-144.
• Saatçioğlu, Beken (2015), “Turkey’s EU Membership Process in the Aftermath of the Gezi Protests”, Toktamış, Kumru and Isabel David (Eds.), Everywhere Taksim: Sowing the Seeds for a New Turkey at Gezi (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press): 267-281.
• Szedlacsek, Eszter (2017), “Eurocrisis: The European Integration as a Neoliberal Project”, Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, 14 (1): 129-136.
• Şenses, Nazlı and Kıvanç Özcan (2016), “Countering Hegemony through a Park: Gezi Protests in Turkey’s Migrant Neighbourhoods”, Agustin Oscar G. and Martin B. Jorgensen (Eds.), Solidarity without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society Alliances (London: Pluto Press): 40-57.
• Tansel, Cemal B. (2017), “Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Towards a New Research Agenda”, Tansel, Cemal B. (Ed.), States of Discipline: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Contested Reproduction of Capitalist Order (London: Rowman and Littlefield International): 1-28.
• Uğur-Çınar Meral and Çisem Gündüz-Arabacı (2020), “Deliberating in Difficult Times: Lessons from Public Forums in Turkey in the Aftermath of the Gezi Protests”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 47 (2): 224-246.
• Warleigh, Alex (2001), “‘Europeanizing’ Civil Society: NGOs as Agents of Political Socialization”, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 39 (4): 619-639.
• Welsh, Levin (2019), “Neoliberalism, the Global Capitalist Crisis, and the Occupy Wall Street Movement”, Berch Berberoğlu (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Social Movements, Revolution, and Social Transformation (Switzerland-Cham: Palgrave Macmillan): 325-351.
• Wunsch, Natasha (2018), “Transnational Learning and Civil Society Empowerment in the EU Enlargement Process”, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 57 (2): 406-423.
• Yalçın, Sezen (2015), “Civil Society in Turkey’s Shrinking Political Space”, Turkish Policy Quarterly, 13 (4): 81-90.
• Yankaya, Dilek (2009), “The Europeanization of MÜSİAD: Political Opportunism, Economic Europeanization, Islamic Euroscepticism”, European Journal of Turkish Studies, 9: 1-21.
• Yılmaz, Gözde (2014), “EU Conditionality Is Not the Only Game in Town! Domestic Drivers of Turkey’s Europeanization”, Turkish Studies, 15 (2): 303-321.
• Zihnioğlu Özge (2013), European Union Civil Society Policy and Turkey: A Bridge Too Far? (London: Palgrave Macmillan).
• Zihnioglu, Özge (2017), “Turkey: The struggles of a new civil society”, Youngs, Richard (Ed.), Global Civic Activism in Flux (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace): 43-46
• Zihnioğlu, Özge (2019a), “European Union Civil Society Support and the Depoliticisation of Turkish Civil Society”, Third World Quarterly, 40 (3): 503-520.
• Zihnioğlu, Özge (2019b), “The Legacy of the Gezi Protests in Turkey”, Youngs, Richard (Ed.), After Protest: Pathways Beyond Mass Mobilization (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace): 11-18.
• Zihnioglu, Özge (2019c), “Engaging Civil Society in Turkey and the EU: Can They Break Through the Deadlock?”, Global Turkey in Europe Working Paper 20, https://www.iai.it/en/pubblicazioni/engaging-civil-society-turkey-and-eu-can-they-break-through-deadlock (10.05.2021).
• Zihnioğlu, Özge (2019d), “The Prospects of Civic Alliance: New Civic Activists Acting Together with Civil Society Organizations”, VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 30(2): 289-299.
• Zihnioğlu, Özge (2020), “Continuity and Change in Turkish Civil Society”, Sokullu, Ebru C. (Ed.), Turkey in Transition: Politics, Society and Foreign Policy (Bern: Peter Lang): 121-136.