Conclusion

Abstract

The EU accession negotiations, by their very nature, crystallize around processes of change. These processes ask Turkey to accept a set of rules and norms that require wide-ranging internal adaptations, and which largely determine the official role that civil society funding plays in the accession context. In other words, the EU rationale for civil society funding links to a perception of NGOs as potential agents of domestic change. The research presented here has asked how EU policy on civil society expects NGOs to deliver change, and identified a conceptual frame for describing these expectations in democratization and Europeanization. The EU anticipates that Turkish civil society can contribute to the accession process by further democratizing and Europeanizing Turkey.