Funding Democracy, Funding Social Services? The European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights in the Context of Competing Narratives in Turkey

Within the process of Turkey's European Union (EU) accession, the EU aims to strengthen Turkey's democratization through various programmes focusing on the role of civil society. By funding non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the EU intends to empower NGOs to take on a self-responsible role in Turkey's democratization process. In this article, I argue that the EU indeed aims to support a liberal narrative through the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) yet by the means of neo-liberal governmental power. Through this it renders the NGOs rather technical instead of political and thus misses the chance of strengthening a liberal narrative that could pose an alternative to the reoccurring hegemonic struggle between a Kemalist and a pro-Islam narrative in Turkey. © 2014 Taylor & Francis