Europeanization literature has been mostly produced for the EU member states. This literature recently started to consider in what ways and under which circumstances enlargement and the accession process change the identity, the interests, and the behavior of governmental and societal actors.
The analysis of Turkish accession to the EU provides the opportunity to test the quality of EU approaches to non-state actors outside EU’s borders. Various participatory mechanisms, capacity building initiatives funded by the EU, general frameworks dictated by the EU to overcome existing policy misfits, and exchanges at the transnational level bring a potential empowerment of non-state actors that will increase their willingness and capacities to contribute to the policy adoption process of an accession state.
This research examines the consequences the EU accession process has on interest groups in Turkey, as the accession country is under investigation here. There are three questions that are given particular attention: First, to what extent are they empowered to become ‘carriers’ of Europeanisation? Second, following from the previous question, do interest groups mobilize as the catalysts for the policy adoption in the accession process or are they detached? Third, what are the conditions facilitate or constrain their involvement?
The results obtained so far indicate that the link between material and political opportunities that the EU might offer and domestic adaptation or mobilization of Turkish non-state actors is not reflexive. Their mode of Europeanisation resonates from both external opportunities (i.e. the influence of the EU) and internal constraints inherent to the respective organizations and their specific policy realms.
The organizations that I will focus on are organized in the sense of their political interests. The empirical data is drawn from expert interviews conducted with the key representatives from the organizations. This paper will have the focus on the NGO sector and refer tp the cases represent four different policy fields namely; human rights , women rights, environment and education& youth policy sectors.
