Paper short abstract:

European institutions are powerful in shaping common language to describe the field of politics. A prominent example is civil society. Turkish activists' use of this notion shows how experiences of the political are framed by such dominant discourses thus producing a particular European unification.

Paper long abstract:

One legacy used in various European and EU identity constructions is an intellectual legacy of societal thinking reaching back to Enlightenment. Within this social framework a conceptualization of civilization, progress and prosperity as something which is intrinsically tied to refinement of polity stands out as a pivotal point. With regard to EU identity construction this is not least expressed through the emphasis on shared (universal) political values, such as democracy and human rights, as something inherently European and a strong unifying factor.

The refinement of polity has since the fall of the Berlin Wall increasingly been associated to the development and strengthening of civil society forces. This is also apparent in an EU context not least with regard to candidacy countries. This expresses both an upsurge in academia, among policy makers and activists in the use of the notion of civil society, as well as the establishment of global dominance of a liberal ideological understanding of the notion, in which development of civil society and democracy goes hand in hand. In other words civil society has moved beyond academia to become a key concept with regard to EU identity construction, enlargement and unification efforts.

Looking at civil society activism in Turkey, the EU rapprochement of the last decades has without doubt contributed to advancing the idea of civil society forces as something which play a positive role in relation to the refinement of polity. It has also paved the way for changing conceptualisations among various social and political actors of what civil society and civil society activism entails. Newcomers to the dictionary of Turkish language such as lobicilik (lobbyism) reflect this. Where civil society was previously primarily conceptualised as a force creating fragmentations and incoherency, it has increasingly also become seen as a force which is able to create cohesion by creating links between social and political actors and the public both domestically and internationally.

This has of course also implied new political practices among civil society activists. An emerging shift from ideological fragmentation toward issue-based politics has slowly begun to produce horizontal networks among civil society activists and organizations. The formation of these networks has been greatly aided and shaped by new technologies, especially email-groups. Such groups are precisely formed on the basis of common topics of interest, and, furthermore, has the advantage that people do not need to meet face to face. Also at the discursive level activists' accounts reflect a sense of individualism, a growing awareness of themselves as brokers both with regard to the inclusion of the public in the state-market-civil society triangle and with regard to international linkages, also in relation to Europe and the EU.

What I aim to provide by way of this presentation is an example of how the formation of conceptualizations of EU and Europe, and the creation of a sense of belonging are, among other, (re)produced through particular performances of concepts which have emerged as central to European an EU identity construction, in this case the concept of civil society. This in hand of course also reinforces the centrality of such concepts beyond the performative contexts. Hopefully the insights of this presentation will lead us to retain strong attention to exploring how intellectual conceptual legacies and the development of these within and beyond academia can form part of the way cohesion and unity with regard to EU and Europe is produced in various ethnographic settings.