MAPPING THE VARIETIES OF PERSPECTIVES ON CIVIC AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION OF YOUTH, WOMEN AND MINORITIES/IMMIGRANTS IN TURKEY Çok F.; Bozkurt Ş.; Şener T. Paper presented at the Surrey PIDOP Conference on “Political and Civic Participation”, April 16 th -17 th, 2012, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

 The aim of this paper is to map discourses on civic and political participation in Turkey in relation to women, youth and minority/immigrant groups.  Dominant paradigms embodied in the perspectives of public authorities and NGOs, and the counter arguments and recent public agenda/media coverage are tried to be underlined.

 This analysis is based on an examination of the policy documents/reports produced between 2004 and 2011 by the public institutions and NGOs working in the fields of youth, women and minorities/migrants in Turkey. In total 34 documents were reviewed, the distributions are shown in Table.1, are incorporated in the study. Distribution of Reviewed Documents by Target Groups youthwomenmigrant/minorityTotal Public68317 NGO67417 Total

 Main Focus of Documents (Governmental)  Protection of the family unity, social solidarity, struggle against poverty and social exclusion  Human rights, gender equality  Prevention of domestic violence  Prevention of honour killings

 Legal improvements in juridical procedures in favour of victim women.  Public institutions concern with women mainly if they are victims.  Restricted participation of women in the parliament and the government (higher representation of women in the main opponent party, new %30 quota? in implementation, there are problems.)

 Existence of a few influential women parliamentarians recently in the parliament  More media coverage of victim women (domestic violence, women murders, sexual harressment/abuse)  More media coverage of successful women (successes of key women figures)

 Increase in number and representation in the public  NGOs have contributed to the politicization of formerly domestic/private issues such as sexual harressment and violence againt women  NGOs have been increasingly interested in women’s conventional forms of participation (such as their more representation in the parliament, encouragement for voting)  NGOs have increasingly stressed the prevention of discrimination against women in the educational and economic spheres

 Huge population and youth population (about million )

Youth unemployment rate (%) Greece24,223,327,929,52826,8 26,92625,22322,125,832,9 Italy33,931,531,929,72726,3 23,52421,620,321,325,427,8 Portugal199,615,78,69,411,614,515,316,116,216,616,52027,7 Spain43,830,240,425,320,822,222,72219,717,918,224,637,941, ,613,116,219,220,520,619,919,12020,5 EU ,314,914,314,815,516,216,916,215,215,719,920,4 EU ,4 18,118,318,718,917,515,715,820,121,1 Huge Youth Unemployment (app. %20-25)

 Young women and unemployment  Unregistered/informal employment and lack of social security  Mismatch of training and work life  Compulsory military service

 Lack of a comprehensive youth policy  despite the existence of huge youth population and the presense of a Ministry for Sports and Youth  Lack of a policy concerning youth participation  Lack of policies/priorities/practices concerning different youth categories such as ethnic and cultural groups, sexual orientation and disabled youth

 Discourses on youth which tend to polarise them in relation to their religious identities  Prime Minister’s declaration of government’s aim to raise a ‘conservative/religious youth  Implicit prioritization of religion in educational system (assignment of religious teachers as school principles, compulsory religion courses)

 Many more young people in the higher education in spite of low quality of educational institutions  Promotion of distance education  Establishement of more youth centres and sport facilities  More budget for youth sport competitions and sports training

 Discouragement (even banning) of active forms of civic and political participation due to protective parental attitudes and political polarization among the youth in the recent past, 1960, 1971, 1980 military interventions contributed to the avoidance of being very active.

 UN-related organisations attempt for promoting sexual health of different youth categories including youth in education and out of education youth.  Public campaigns for increasing schooling of girls especially from disadvanted backgrounds  Slight increase in the numbers of youth organizations and activities promoting especially civic engagement of young individuals

 The conception of ‘minority’ in Turkey implies differences from most of the European countries. According to the Turkish Constitution, the concept of citizenship does not include any reference to one’s ethnic and/or religious identity. It is estimated that there are about 50 different ethnic groups in the current nation of Turkey.  Legally all citizens without reference to their ethnic or religious backgrounds have equal rights and obligations. Since the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the only protection for minorities has been that set out in the 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne. In the Treaty only the non- Muslim populations are defined as minorities (Minority Rights Group International, 2007).

 In the process of creation of a nation state ideology by Atatürk on the basis of single national identity had been emphasized.

 The conception of immigration has quite different meanings in Turkey stemming from rich cultural heritage, consisting of a variety of cultural populations and transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic  Most of the Turkish citizens have trans-generational immigration story  Immigrants in Turkey are not visible as they are in Europe and they do not have a strong immigration identity except from recent immigrants from Middle Eastern and European countries.  High ratios of illegal immigration to Turkey recently

 Lack of a comprehensive strategy for minority/immigrant issues.  Lack of registered data on ethnic minorities and immigrants.  The project team choose working with Roma and Bulgarian resettlers as minority groups which have different characteristics and problems in the participation processes.

 Slight coverage of promotion of life standards of Roma people  Recent projects of NGOs for the imrovement of living conditions of Bulgarian resettlers  Focus on Kurdish issue more than before and more than other ethnic and cultural populations.  If Kurdish people are minority is a controversial issue due to their high ratio.  Alevi issue has been central in terms of religious minority for years but they still have problems in relation to their religious rights

 Limited number of available documents regarding policies for youth, women and minorities/immigrants.  Slight increase of attention and promotion of participation of women in civil and political life  Despite huge youth population and the existance of a Ministry for Youth and Sports, there is almost no long term policies and strategies for youth participation  Almost no comprehensive policies for minorities/immigrants

The PIDOP project is supported by a grant received from the European Commission 7th Framework Programme, FP7- SSH , Grant Agreement no: , Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation (PIDOP) awarded to the University of Surrey (UK), University of Lie ̀ ge (Belgium), Masaryk University (Czech Republic), University of Jena (Germany), University of Bologna (Italy), University of Porto (Portugal), O ̈ rebro University (Sweden), Ankara University (Turkey) and Queen’s University Belfast (UK)