Exploring Turkish Youth Perceptions of the European Project: A Periphery Perspective

Date

2024-01-01

Author

Bedir, Nurdan Selay
Şenyuva, Özgehan

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In the field of EU Studies, various academic studies indicate a prevailing political trend where people tend to become more Eurosceptic as they age. Yet, there is an increasing level of youth support for Eurosceptic parties in Europe in the meantime. This chapter examines how this trend takes place in the periphery of the EU project, specifically focusing on how young, informed citizens in Türkiye evaluate different aspects of EU integration. In conducting this examination, the chapter investigates the dynamics and reasons behind Euroscepticism among the young generation in Türkiye, which can be characterised as “bottom-up” Euroscepticism. The dimensions that are referred to in this research are economics, security, and politics. Adopting the interpretivist paradigm, this chapter delves into questions surrounding the current crisis of the EU project, the anticipated problems in Türkiye-EU relations, and the future of the EU project. To explore the perceptions of young citizens, the chapter resorts to focus group meetings and employs purposive sampling as the methodology. The authors carried out the analysis through manual coding through the first and second readings and a comparative analysis of the results through a pre-determined qualitative codebook, marking certain comments, proposals and arguments on the themes of the LEAP project. Therefore, this chapter aims to contribute to enhancing young citizens’ knowledge and promotion of EU integration in the long term while addressing the challenges resulting from the nature and characteristics of bilateral relations, which, in this case, Türkiye-EU relations.

URI

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68771-6_7
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/113198

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Book / Book chapter