Türkiye'nin Avrupa Birliği'ne katılımı için itici bir güç olarak sivil toplum.

This thesis analyses whether the European Union acts as a trigger for Turkey’s democratisation process within the pre-accession period. This study claims that although Turkish civil society has practically been characterised as weak and inactive, the impact of the European Union’s politics of civil society on Turkish civil society organisations is a substantial contribution to democratic consolidation in Turkey, where the weakness of democracy has always been an obstacle for the country’s integration to the Union. In accordance with this claim, three civil society organisations, which have been previously awarded European Union funded grant, were selected and a printed media screening study covering the period from the Helsinki Summit of 1999, when the European Commission took Turkey’s membership application into consideration, to Turkish General Elections of 2011, was carried out. Through this study, the main purpose was to observe to what extent civil society organisations, having been financed under European Union funded grant schemes, provided contribution to Turkey’s democratisation process.M.S. - Master of Scienc