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ABSTRACT
Mainstream academic and policy literature emphasizes the nexus between an active and vibrant civil society sector and greater political accountability. As a result, support for civil society has become central to international policy efforts to strengthen democracy in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region. However, the empirical evidence presented in this article questions the validity of this assumption. Drawing on information gathered through 38 in-depth qualitative interviews with women’s organizations from across the seven administrative regions of Turkey, and key representatives from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), this article analyses the role of the AKP government in co-opting and influencing women’s organizations in Turkey. The results that emerge demonstrate that the government is actively involved in fashioning a civil society sector that advances their interests and consolidates their power. Independent women’s organizations report that they are becoming increasingly excluded from policy and legislative discussions, as seemingly civic organizations are supported and often created by the government to replace them. These organizations function to disseminate government ideas in society and to provide a cloak of democratic legitimacy to policy decisions. These findings and their implications have significant consequences for theory and policy on civil society and its role in supporting democracy.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The term civil society organization (CSO) refers to a rubric of formal and informal organizations, including women’s organizations, community organizations, faith-based organizations, charity organizations, advocacy groups and formal non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
2. Cavatorta, “Divided They Stand”; Chandhoke, Civil Society.
3. Independent from the government. However, this sector is by no means apolitical, as many of these CSOs align with other political interests, including opposition parties, see Doyle, “Civil Society Organisations.”
4. Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society.
5. de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America.”
6. Kumar, “Civil Society.”
7. Altan-Olcay and Icduygu, “Mapping Civil Society in the Middle East”; Cavatorta and Durac, Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World.
8. Mercer, “Performing Partnership.”
9. See European Commission, Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance. More recent EU reports do not specify the precise percentage of the budget allocated to civil society.
10. European Commission, Civil Society Facility, 3.
11. Abdelrahman, “The Politics of ‘Uncivil’ Society in Egypt,” 21.
12. Buttigieg, “Gramsci on Civil Society”; Simon, Gramsci’s Political Thought.
13. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (first compiled 1931–1932), 242.
14. Hearn, “The ‘Uses and Abuses’ of Civil Society in Africa”; Mercer, “Performing Partnership.”
15. Hearn, “The ‘Uses and Abuses’ of Civil Society in Africa,” 43.
16. Abdelrahman, Civil Society Exposed; Hawthorne, “Middle Eastern Democracy”; Durac and Cavatorta, Politics and Governance in the Middle East; Landolt, “Rival Transnational Advocacy Networks.”
17. Cavatorta, “Divided They Stand”; Chandhoke, Civil Society.
18. Kubicek, “The European Union and Grassroots Democratization in Turkey,” 366.
19. Aknur, Democratic Consolidation in Turkey; Kubicek, “The Earthquake,” 366.
20. The Kemalist ideology and term Kemalism (sometimes called Atatürkism) in general refers to the ideology of the new Turkish Republic. At its centre are six fundamental principles or arrows, namely Republicanism. Nationalism/Patriotism, Populism, Statism, Laicism/Secularism (Laiklik) and Revolutionism/Reformism (Ahmad, Turkey: The Quest for Identity). It is synonymous with ideas of modernity and a move away from religion in the public sphere.
21. Diner and Toktaş, “Waves of Feminism in Turkey”; Esim and Cindoglu, “Women’s Organizations in 1990s Turkey.”
22. Kubicek, “The Earthquake.”
23. These included a ban on all political activities by civil society, and the detention and often torture of civil society activists.
24. Öktem, Turkey since 1989; Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics.
25. Aknur, Democratic Consolidation in Turkey.
26. Kubicek, “Political Conditionality,” 915.
27. An allegedly clandestine, Kemalist organization charged with plotting to overthrow the AKP government.
28. Protests that began as a peaceful protest against the re-development of Istanbul’s Gezi park, but turned into a protest against AKP authoritarianism when the state responded by harshly suppressing them.
29. Öniş, “Sharing Power”; Arat, “Religion, Politics and Gender Equality in Turkey.”
30. Özbudun, “AKP at the Crossroads.”
31. Freedom House, Democracy in Crisis.
32. Arat, “Religion, Politics and Gender Equality in Turkey.”
33. Ibid.
34. Department of Associations, Number of Active Associations; Third Sector Foundation of Turkey, Civil Society Monitoring Report.
35. CIVICUS, Civil Society in Turkey.
36. Moghadam, Modernizing Women.
37. Arat, “Religion, Politics and Gender Equality in Turkey.”
38. For a more detailed list of the specific objectives of the women’s organizations in the selected research sample see Doyle, “Civil Society Organisations,” Chapter 6.
39. Chief amongst which were databases compiled by the Women’s Library and Information Centre Foundation and Ucan Supurge women’s organization.
40. Akboga, “Turkish Civil Society Divided by the Headscarf Ban”; Diner and Toktaş, “Waves of Feminism in Turkey.”
41. Specifically, unregistered, community-based and rural organizations. To the author’s knowledge, these organizations have not been included in any comprehensive academic study of CSOs in Turkey to date.
42. Snowball sampling involves obtaining respondents through referral; in this instance from interviewees in the purposive sample, as well as local informants and academics.
43. See Doyle, “Civil Society as Ideology in the Middle East.”
44. Interview with Islamic women’s organization # 1, August 2013.
45. Interview with Islamic women’s organization #3, October 2013.
46. Doyle, “Civil Society as Ideology in the Middle East.”
47. Interview with Kurdish women’s organization #3, October 2013
48. Interview with Kemalist women’s organization #1, August 2013
49. Sarkissian and Özler, “Democratization.”
50. This issue is not discussed within the context of the present article.
51. Durac and Cavatorta, Politics and Governance in the Middle East.
52. Landolt, “Rival Transnational Advocacy Networks.”
53. Mercer, “NGOs, Civil Society and Democratization.”
54. Interview with Kurdish women’s organization #4, November 2013.
55. The name given to temporary accommodation set up for those made homeless by the earthquake.
56. Interview with Kurdish women’s organization #7, December 2013.
57. Interview with feminist women’s organization #1, August 2013.
58. Arat, “Islamist Women.”
59. These have mainly targeted girls, with girls comprising almost 95% of the 1,125,000 students enrolled in Qur’an courses in 2012; see ibid., 133.
60. Interview with women’s feminist women’s organization #2, September 2013.
61. Interview with women’s feminist women’s organization #1, August 2013.
62. The exact date of this discussion is not reported intentionally in order to protect the anonymity of organizations present; the meeting took place in 2014.
63. Interview with Kemalist women’s organization #2, September 2013.
64. Abdelrahman, Civil Society Exposed; Mercer, “NGOs, Civil Society and Democratization”; Mercer, “Performing Partnership”; Wiktorowicz, “Civil Society as Social Control.”
65. It is worth noting that interviewees pointed out that this was never done directly but rather “through friends,” whereby government representatives encouraged associates to set up organizations.
66. Interview with Kemalist women’s organization #7, January 2014.
67. Interview with feminist women’s organization #6, September 2013 (emphasis in original).
68. Wiktorowicz, “Civil Society as Social Control.”
69. Interview with government representative #2, February 2014.
70. With a few notable exceptions; Çelik and İşeri, “Islamically Oriented Humanitarian NGOs”; Dalacoura and Seckinelgin, The State of Democracy in Turkey; and Doyle, “State Control of Civil Society Organizations.”
71. See Doyle, “State Control of Civil Society Organizations.”
72. Interview with Kurdish women’s organization #9, January 2015.
73. Mercer, “NGOs, Civil Society and Democratization,” 13.
74. Cavatorta, “Divided They Stand.”
75. Chandhoke, Civil Society.
76. Abdelrahman, Civil Society Exposed.
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Jessica Leigh Doyle
Jessica Leigh Doyle is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Transitional Justice Institute at Ulster University. She holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from University College Dublin, Ireland. She is currently working on a UK government-funded project which explores issues of gender and political settlements. Her research has been published in such journals as Democratization, and the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. She is also active as a consultant for the Department of Justice, Northern Ireland on gender and domestic violence.