Continuity and change in Turkish civil society

Throughout Turkey's modern history, civil society simultaneously embodied and reflected continuity and change. On the one hand, political environment at home and abroad has changed. New actors and issues entered civil society, while some others drifted away. On the other hand, certain key features of Turkish civil society and associationalism has remained constant. The purpose of this chapter is to show and account for the changes Turkish civil society over the last two decades. It examines how Turkish civic space diversified with new groups like human rights organizations from the 1990s until the early 2000s. It shows how EU funds led to first brief-case NGOs and later, together with civil society co-optation, to government-organized NGOs. Examining the changes in Turkish civil society over the past decade, this chapter presents how traditional civic organizations increasingly shy away from overtly political activities and take on less political discourse