Europeanization and Legacies: Women's Civil Society in Turkey

How EU integration and legacies mattered for women’s civil society in Turkey? Existing studies on Europeanization of civil society has generated a vast body of literature that has stressed the impact of EU on these transformations. Substantively, this work contains valuable insights about the role of civil society as an agent of EU democratization and issues related to civil society institutional changes as consequences of EU conditionality. Much less attention has been given to complex interaction between EU and domestic factors and role of historical legacies as explanatory domestic factors. In this paper, I argue that successful EU involvement depends on historical legacies, particularly, stronger impact in women’s civil society reflects that historical legacies may act as facilitating condition of the EU impact. Therefore, positive impact of the EU on women’s civil society, especially on women’s NGOs, has depended on domestic conditions since both EU and domestic legacies of the past shape development of women’s NGOs in Turkey. Empirical evidence from women’s NGOs in Turkey supports this argument.