Empowering Youth in European Civil Society: A Case Study from Türkiye

Research on European Social Issues

Research article

Empowering Youth in European Civil Society: A Case Study from Türkiye

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https://doi.org/10.54963/resi.v1i1.1555
Ünalp Çepel, Z. (2025). Empowering Youth in European Civil Society: A Case Study from Türkiye. Research on European Social Issues, 1(1), 38–50. https://doi.org/10.54963/resi.v1i1.1555
Volume 1 Issue 1 (2025)

Authors

  • Zühal Ünalp Çepel

    Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Business, Dokuz Eylül University, Tinaztepe Campus, 35390 Izmir, Türkiye

Received: 13 March 2025; Revised: 1 May 2025; Accepted: 8 May 2025; Published: 15 May 2025

A vibrant civil society has always been an important precondition for a democratic regime. The European Union (EU) has been one of the main actors in the world, promoting democratic values through various programs, especially in candidate and neighbouring countries. Those programs and the domestic change in the countries promote a Europeanization process. Türkiye has been an EU candidate country since 1999, and ongoing projects have been undertaken to strengthen civil society, which has been an important part of the Copenhagen criteria for full membership. The empowerment of civil society requires the role of youth, since the young people are the main actors in social learning processes. The social inclusion of youth is promoted with an active civil society, which serves the social learning of European norms and values accordingly. The aim of this paper is two-fold: It firstly aims to analyze the impact of Europeanization on the social inclusion of youth and secondly, the contribution of youth to the development of civil society in Türkiye. The paper follows a qualitative study with observation and archival research at Dokuz Eylül University Faculty of Business between 2021 and 2024. The study found that social learning at universities, although being a top-down process, can create a more democratic environment at the local level.

Keywords:

Youth Social Inclusion Civil Society European Union Türkiye

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