Political Engagement of Young Women in Sakarya (a Provincial City in Turkey)

This Paper which based on field research attempts to discuss the degrees of political engagement of young Turkish women who live in Sakarya, a provincial city in Turkey. In this regard, first we try to understand what does politics mean to our interviewees and second we focus why they actually don't have an interest to political area. In general, this study examines the reasons which keep them away from conventional and unconventional form of engagement, in other words, it is argued that the role of family, father's domination, social structure and political orientation of Sakarya, national context, and finally political crises could be consider as a main effect to understand their low sense of political engagement. Here, the term "engagement" refers to basic form of political interest, like informing themselves, following the news, talking about everyday politics or just being interested in politics just during elections. In this respect, we emphasize the individual visions, cultural baggage and family's political heritage of the interviewees, in other sense, we argue that they would (or not) to invest their capital for politics, which is considerably a complicated and distrustful area for them. Following this purpose, we discuss the political climate of Turkey, which was ‘on edge’ regarding the conflicts/crises between the national and international relationships during our fieldwork. We observe that those conflicts and crises influence the political perception and engagement of interviewees in a manner that they stay alerts to all dynamism of the country; but yet choose the apathy or being ignorant against these crises.