Who Supports the Eu-Led Reforms for Democratization ın Turkey? Evidence from the Turkish University Youths

Who Supports the Eu-Led Reforms for Democratization ın Turkey? Evidence from the Turkish University Youths

TEKİN, Yusuf
KAR, Muhsin
AKGÜN, Birol
AĞIR, Hüseyin
ÖZ, Bülent

It is generally argued that Turkey seems to be different geographically, culturally, politically and economically from the EU. Transformation of Turkey towards the Europe in these terms requires overcoming a broad range of the obstacles and maintaining reforms process without losing public support. This situation exposes the importance of internal dynamics in the accession process in terms of carrying out necessary reforms for the full membership. However, Turkey recently experienced an unprecedented reform process as a result of the synergy between external and internal factors, particularly the EU. This research tries to empirically examine the youth support for the EU-led reform process by utilizing a novel data set obtained from the questionnaire carried out in 26 different universities about 2000 students, during November and December 2009, in Turkey. The empirical findings show that partisanship, both political and religious attachments and national identity are the important factors which explain differences of individual support for the EU-led reform process for democratization in Turkey.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2010-06

194