Turkish Citizen Social Studies

Civil Society has been a focus of study for the international academia since the SovietUnion’s disintegration and Eastern Europe’s revulsion in1990s, and it has become an essentialfactor for observing and analyzing the non-Western countries’ political and social developments.Recently, with the up-rising of Turkey, especially as the new economy, a secular and democraticstate with Muslim-majority population, the influences of Turkey in the Islam world have beengrowing increasingly. The achievements of social and economic developments, democracyconstruction including the improvements of civil society in Turkey obviously caught attentions ofMiddle Eastern countries with radical changes. Consequently, the study of Turkish civil societyand its functions in the democracy construction, social and economic developments are the majorpoints in the paper.Both Turkish historical development process and outer world influences especially fromEuropean countries contributed to the emergence and improvement of Turkish civil society. Basedon the comments of Turkish civil society’s research situation, the paper will analyze and discussits origin, development, characteristics and categories, in addition, the influences on the Turkishpolitics, economy and social life are discussed here.The First Chapter introduces the origin and development of the Turkish civil society. It wasright after the Tanzimat in the late Ottoman Empire that the civil rights were acclaimed for the firsttime, which promoted the sprout of civil society; In the beginning of the Republic, the authorityregime limited and controlled the improvement of civil society; Since the middle of1980s,Turkish civil society has made a great progress with the implement of free economic policies. TheSecond Chapter mainly narrates the categories and classifications of Turkish Civil Society, whichare divided into secular and religious civil society organizations on the basis of religiousinfluences. The Turkish unique history, religion and cultural backgrounds created civil societywith dependent economy, fragmentized groups, continuous conflicts, few cooperation andreligious features. At present, the Turkish civil society organizations covers comprehensive fieldswith a large amount of members and has close cooperation with international non-governmentorganizations. The Third Chapter analyzes the status of civil society in the political, economic andsocial developments. Furthermore, the functions and limitations of Turkish civil society arediscussed from the perspective of the relation between state and society. The writer considers thatthe Turkish civil society experienced the process of sprout, stagnation and development, which notonly promoted democracy and politics, but also improved the women social status, human rights,environmental protection situation, education etc. In conclusion, compared to other Middle Eastern countries, the functions of Turkish civil society are much more obvious. However, owingto the influence of traditional model “Strong State, Weak Society”, military intervention in politics,the conflicts between the secularity and the religion, and the disadvantages of civil society, thefunctions of Turkish civil society are still limited, the developments are immature, transitional andof unbalanced geographical distributions.