Civic space in Turkey: a social capital approach to civil society

Abstract

The present study explores civil society organizations’ (CSOs) civic and political potential in Turkey. For this purpose, it generates original data from Antalya and utilizes social network analysis to analyze the CSOs’ cooperation structure. The analysis points out certain levels of dynamism and diversity in terms of the CSOs’ cooperative connections. Yet it also shows variance between the publicgoods oriented Putnam-type CSOs and the special-interest oriented Olsontype CSOs in terms of their civic and political potential. This observed variance, in turn, is likely to influence their respective potential to articulate common interests on the one hand, to affect politics on the other hand.