In the context of the political participation the place of graduate students in political life: The sample of Ardahan university

The governing-governed relation has been a lasting debate all through history. If this debate differs in the different circles is not only because of spreading of democracy, but also the man's strong desire for self-government as it is the definition of democracy too. In the past, individual's perception of participation to select his/her own governor was perceived enough, however, nowadays the person is interested in playing role in the decision making process by his/her own. Individuals have made far much efforts so far whether in form of collective movements or individually. While a man is consciously playing role in political or government participation, unconsciously participating can be seen in some societies too. In this framework, participation status can be understood from the proportion of ballot papers and level of participation of individuals in elections. However, the problem whether this proportion overlaps with the figure of reality of political participation will be recognized. When this situation is assessed in Turkey, the level of participation is to some extent in line with in other democratic developed societies. When looking at framework of perception of participation of those states appearing democratic and with assumed high level of political participation, however, we are facing with fact that the level of participation in the mentioned states is not high. In order to understand this situation with a more realistic way, this empirical study has tried to determine the level of political participation of Ardahan University graduate students. To end this, from the qualitative research methods, ongoing empirical study has collected the required data using 19 open-ended questions throughout interviews. The first two chapters present necessary theoretical information about the political participationterm. The third and last chapter contains the outcomes of the interviews as well as supporting findings from other empirical studies in the literature. Keywords: Democracy, Conscious Participation, Elections, Political Participation, Turkey.