ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the wider implications of Turkish civil society’s gradual depoliticization on Turkey’s relations with the EU. For this purpose, this chapter discusses how the diminishing of rights-based groups and activities undermine Turkey’s already faltering democracy. It overviews the achievements of rights-based groups and the roles they assumed in earlier decades. This chapter then deliberates on how depoliticization adversely affects civil society’s role in transnational social learning and norm entrepreneurship. In doing that, this chapter underlines the shift towards a transactional approach in the relations and discusses its impact on the EU’s normative conditionality towards Turkey. This chapter reiterates that civil society matters for EU–Turkey relations.
