Devlet ile toplum arasındakı bağ olarak sivil toplum örgütleri: Güneydoğu Anadolu'daki çok amaçlı toplum merkezleri

Civil society initiatives in Turkey are transforming from organizations based ontraditional commitments, religious ties, and other primordial forms of relations toorganizations based on universal values, which are shaped mainly by the claims of alarger civil society on a global scale. These universal values are in closeinterconnection with changes taking place at the local level, exerting an influence onparticularistic values. This results in flows of interaction between global civil societyand grassroots initiatives. In this sense, civil society organizations at the nationallevel play a crucial role in the provision of the link between the global and the localwithin a given nation-state. However, values promoted at the national level, shapedmainly by politics of the nation-state, can be in sharp contradiction to those of auniversalist and equally particularistic character.This situation is currently prevalent in Turkey with respect to the discussions on thecrisis of democracy in the country. Civil society organizations, represented mainlyby vakıfs and derneks as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), are trying to bringcloser together the national practice of democracy with the changes of the notion ofdemocracy at the global level, with reference to local particularities. It is the role ofthe national NGOs in Turkey, then, to ease the tension with respect to the clash ofvalues between the state and the local community level as shaped by a global civilsociety. On a global scale, NGOs have started filling the gap between the top-downpolicies of the state and the bottom-up demands of local grassroots activity. Thethree-tier relationship between the state, NGO, and the local community is becomingincreasingly complex due to the internal as well as external forces at play.It is this role of Turkish NGOs that is the focus of the current study. It is interestingto observe the degree to which NGOs in Turkey are creating alternatives todevelopment and a move towards participatory democracy through women?sempowerment centers within a larger state-sponsored development project inSoutheastern Turkey. Given the peculiarities of gender and minorities as essentialcomponents of the case study, the thesis analyzes the role of Turkish NGOs increating the links between local and central authorities on the one hand, and the localcommunity on the other.Keywords: Civil society, NGOs, Development, Women?s Community Centers,Southeastern Turkey