Political participation of youth in Turkey: An examination on the basis of political parties youth organizations

In representative democracies, members are one of the most important components of political parties. However, we have been witnessing the fact that party membership is in a downward trend for quarter century. One of the proofs of this given fact is that political parties are not mechanisms which have been requested by citizens anymore. Since 1990's, party membership has also began to lose its importance and meaning in Turkey as well. The main problematic of this study to find out the situation of young party members in party membership context and the patterns on which young party members' membership activisms of two dominant parties in İzmir. In this study, the relations between youth and politics, ways which young people choose to participate in politics, party membership activisms of young people and legal framework of youth organisations of parties have been held and a comparison with German political parties has been made in this regard so that we have an international outlook to observe. In the study, we have discovered that political activism, political socialisation, membership's practicals and the legal framework of young party members in youth factions of German political parties are the main factors that appear as being main reasons why German examples differentiate with Turkish correspondents. In the light of finding we reach via survey method we us for gathering datas were evaluated separately for each party after being expressed by including each party members. In the light of foregoing, we experienced that Bruter and Harisson's young party members typhology was not quite explanatory to analyze Izmir case because of both parties intrastructures and the factors that the model omits. Roughly, we have discovered that, JDP (AK Parti) members are mostly professional minded and RPP (CHP) members are moral minded younsters. Key Words: political party, youth organisations/factions/wings, party membership, RPP (CHP), AK Parti(JDP), political participation, German Political Parties, JUSOS, Junge Union, Linksjugend Solid, Grüne Jugend, Izmir.