Empowering the Civic Engagement on the Internet: Three NGOs in the Turkish Context

As the number of Non-GovernmentalOrganizations (NGOs) is rapidly increases in Turkey, the question whether thoseorganizations actively encourage citizen online deliberation still staysunanswered. While there is extensive civil society-based deliberationonline around the world,1 there is no known research conducted onTurkish NGOs’ drawing attention to particular issues on local or national levelin the deliberative democracy framework. This paper examines how three TurkishNGOs use the Internet as a forum for fostering online deliberation and also forencouragement of civil and political engagement.


As the number of Non-GovernmentalOrganizations (NGOs) is rapidly increases in Turkey, the question whether thoseorganizations actively encourage citizen online deliberation still staysunanswered. While there is extensive civil society-based deliberationonline around the world,1 there is no known research conducted onTurkish NGOs’ drawing attention to particular issues on local or national levelin the deliberative democracy framework. This paper examines how three TurkishNGOs use the Internet as a forum for fostering online deliberation and also forencouragement of civil and political engagement.

In other words,it relies on deliberative democracy debates to shed the light on the problemsof Turkish NGOs in terms of creating civil engagement. The question however is to whatextent NGOs use the decentralized technology of the Internet to publicize theirmessages and whether they are aware of the effectiveness of this unique feature.Thus, this paper only focuses on the civic organizations’ perspective and theiruse of the Internet to empower the deliberative ideals excluding the possibleeffects of the online deliberation on the community. As a methodology,in-depth interviews have been conducted with NGOs in the search of a broaderperspective on the relationship between the Internet and civil society inTurkey.

Keywords: Turkey,Internet, deliberative democracy, NGO, civil society

While the Internethas the potential to create environments in which ideas and viewpoints can be challengedand contested, that phenomenon can also be seen as its reinforcing andaccelerating the pace of online deliberation. Deliberation entailsdebate, discussion and persuasion in the public square(Wilhelm, 2000) and this conception of deliberation leads us to one of thevital functions of the civil society in which "individuals andgroups can become informed about issues, discuss and debatethese issues autonomously, and ultimately have an impact on policyagendas" (Wilhelm, 2000: 9). Ultimately, the idea ofdeliberative methods can be trace to Jürgen Habermas. At the core ofdeliberative democracy, however, stands the Habermasian notion of the publicsphere where preferences are transformed through the active exchange of ideas —listening as well as expression of opinions. A successfulpublic sphere is necessary to create a sense of belonging and a common goalbetween the users. Habermas defended the idea of creating a public sphere ofuncoerced conversation oriented toward a pragmatic accord. Inthe world of flesh and bones, some experiences have beenmade of creating those spaces for dialogue, with the goal of empowering the citizensin participating in the decision making process, the deliberative methods.Those methods are to create a framework for dialogue amongpolicy-makers, experts and ordinary citizens and to empower the citizens andqualify the dialogue. In contrast with the Habermasian concept of public sphere2where homogeneous space of embodies subjects are in symmetrical relations,however, the search of deliberative model of democracy on theInternet offers new interactivities between various individuals and groups.

The Notion ofDeliberative Democracy

Although the notionof deliberation as the essence of democracy has its roots as far as the 5thcentury B.C. in ancient Greece with the works ofPericles, the literature on deliberative democracy has revived among the modern political theorists since the 1990s(Barber, 1998; Benhabib, 1996; Bohman & Rehg, 1997; Cohen,1997, 2002; Dryzek, 1990, 2000; Elster, 1998; Gastil, J., 2000;

2 To formthe issue of the political nature of the Internet, the concept of the publicsphere is particularly appropriate since there occurs noface-to-face interaction, only electronic "flickers" (see Hayles,1993).

Gimmler, 2001;Gutmann & Thompson, Levine, 2000; Macedo, 1999; Young, 2000). One of the majorreasons for this ‘deliberative shift’ is due partly to the innovationsdeveloped over the past two decades in informationcommunication technologies, more specifically the Internet. The decentralized nature of the Internet along with its speed, transparency,interactivity and its ability to offer unlimitedamounts of information to citizens has given the deliberative model ofdemocracy a new sense of hope. Accordingly, a deliberativedemocracy strives to "recapture the stronger democraticideal that government should embody the will of the people formed through thepublic reasoning of citizens" (Bohman, 1998: 401). Put simply,"deliberative democracy demands more democraticinteraction" through its citizens (Dahlberg, 2001: 167); it tries to putreasoned deliberation back into democratic theory. Thus,deliberative democracy theory is not distinct from theideas proposed by the traditional participatory democracy theory. Deliberativetheory can be generally defined as an approach, which aims for a constructionof ideal standards for political deliberation.According to Cohen (1997), the "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open"deliberative debate is the strongest kind of democracy.Citizens face each other in communities to discuss issues ofpublic importance in an ongoing and iterated discussion, which contributes totheir own self-governance by means of ongoing reflective debate("Noveck, 1999: 473). Through free speech they confronteach other’s differing ideas and aspirations for the future of society. In thisprocess of self-challenge, they learn and change and sometimeseven achieve consensus and the motivation for action.However, the strength of this kind of democracy is not measured by the outcomealone, but by the process. As a major feature ofdeliberative democracy, active citizens interact with one another in reasoned public discussion within a civil society unmediatedby state institutions (Rawls, 1993: 224; Cohen, 1997: 145).

According to Gutmann and Thompson (1996), deliberation may create agreater understanding and tolerance to opposing views and alsomay encourage a public-spirited way of approaching to socialproblems. This unquestionably is a creative process where participants brainstorm andgenerate new ideas. Young (2000) indicates that deliberative democracy can alsobe used to widen democratic inclusion and break the cycleof political inequality. While highlighting the practicaladvantages of deliberative democracy, Levine (2000) points out that democracy requiresdeliberation for at least three reasons. First, discussing public issues helpscitizens to form opinions where they might otherwise have none.Second, deliberation offers democratic leaders better insightinto public concerns than elections do. And third, public deliberation offers away of getting people to justify their views so that publiccan sort out the better from the worse. The general idea ofdeliberative democracy is that political conversation does not serve democracy,if it is not deliberative and amongst a heterogeneous groupof people. Fundamental criteria of deliberative democracyare difference between and disagreement amongst participants, opinions, andarguments. Deliberation is aimed at fostering understanding to enablecollective actions to resolve through free and equal exchange of arguments ofall sides, rather than through coercion (Price and Cappella,2002). The virtue of deliberative democracy, Arnett (2001: 325) indicates, isthat "it does not try to deny or repress conflict, nor does it merelytolerate conflict. Its virtue is that it attends todifferences, supported by additional awareness of points of commonality."

CivicEngagement in the Cyberspace
<> The technicalpossibilities of the Internet have led a number of scholars to examine theextent to which the Internet is really enhancing the publicsphere, by creating a public space that meets the requirements of communicative rationality or whether it holds potentialfor deliberation more in general (Friedland, 1996; Streck,1998; Dahlberg, 2000; Gastil, 2000; Jankowski & Van Selm, 2000;Wilhelm, 2000; Coleman & Gotze, 2001; Gimmler, 2001; Sunstein, 2001;Tanner, 2001; Hagemann, 2002; Papacharissi, 2002; Price &Cappella, 2002; Stromer-Galley, 2002; Tsaliki, 2002). TheInternet is often credited for its possibility to liberate us from the socialhierarchies and power relations that exists offline. Gastil (2000: 359) seesthis feature as one of the strongest points of the Internet:"if computer-mediated interaction can consistently reduce the independentinfluence of status, it will have a powerful advantageover face-to-face deliberation". The Internet has also led manyscholars to investigate whether new hope for strong democracy has arisen. Featuresof the Internet as reduced social cues, a lowered sense of social presence andthe possibility to remain anonymous has generated renewedinterest in political conversation and strong or deliberative democracy. Some theorists (Barber, Mattson, and Peterson, 1997; Dahl,1989; London, 1993) believe that deliberation couldbe conducted entirely through the Internet and the Internet could be a viablealternative to face-to-face meetings among citizens since computer-mediatedinteraction can consistently reduce the independent influence of social status(Sanders, 1997). As Dahlberg notes, despite theconversations on the Internet feature disagreements, "virtual communitiesare often based upon people getting together with similarvalues, interests, and concerns" (Dahlberg, 2001: 10). On the other hand, Barber, Mattson and Peterson (1997) argue thatit is precisely the anonymity that undermines the deliberativepotential of the Internet — though they admit it can help promote saferand open discussion— as it seems to make for a ‘general lack of civility/ Theimportance of the Internet, O’Hara argues, lies in thefollowing four characteristics of the Internet: it is very empoweringfor individuals; the amount of information made available through it is enormous;specific audiences can be targeted very effectively;and you can bring people together through the medium (O’Hara, 2002: 291). Inother words, the Internet brings new possibilities in that it "makesmanageable large-scale, many-to-many discussion and deliberation" (Coleman& Gotze, 2001: 17).

The deliberative methods imply personal contact between the actors,where the fact of learning to know each other is pointed at a partof the deliberation process. Another way of using theInternet is facilitate the dialog between citizens and politicians, tosupplement and enrich the "traditional"representative democracy. This can be done with the "deliberativemethods"; citizens are brought together tocommunicate among themselves, and with experts and citizens, to strengthentheir involvement in the public life and to bring their input into the decisionmaking process (Putman, 2000). However, according to Witschge(2002), the maze-like architecture of the Internet and thecolonization of cyberspace and the traditional media-scape by corporatemonoliths raise doubts as to how such public spaces can beconstructed and preserved. The noise of the technology also threatens the flourishingof deliberative democracy. In an era of information overload, when so many people are talking that, increasingly, no one islistening, meaningful debate and dialogue cannot take place without editorialregulation and intervention (see Kraut et al. 1998; Putnam 2000).

According to Wilhelm (2000), however, democratic practice in the publicsphere signifies "the vital channels in civil society inwhich individuals and groups can become informed about issues, discuss and debate these issues autonomously, and ultimatelyhave an impact on policy agendas." In this context,civil society organizations make five types of contributions to the political deliberation -knowledge of the conditions of affected groups, bestpractices, understandings of underlying factors, evaluations ofclaims made and space for discussion. Whether or not these contributions are significant in any particular case, or whether theypromote democracy will depend on the informal institutions thatlink civil society associations together, and to the polity. Those factors willsurely include the overall political conditions, the size and resource base ofthe civil society organizations themselves, and the quality oftheir leadership (Chalmers, 2004). Amongst this debate, however,non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seem to be the closest to what might bethe public sphere of genuine deliberation.

The Internet has spawned a profusion of technological innovations thatcontinue to change the conduct of public life (Bimber 1998, 2003; Davis 1999;Hill and Hughes 1997). In tandem, numerous speculationshave emerged about the impact of the Internet on civic engagement in the populace(Katz and Rice 2002; Norris 1999, 2000). Some of this potential impact involveshow formal and informal organizations utilize the Internetto distribute information and mobilize political interests.Positive, idealistic speculations see the Internet as strengthening civilsociety and democratic politics more generally as  it expands the opportunities forcommunication and mobilization.On the other hand, there are barriers to entry into a digitally mediated publicsphere since participation requires a demanding set ofresources and skills, including the cost of assessing and/orpurchasing capital-intensive hardware, the computer literacy needed tomanipulate and navigate new media environments, and communicative skills andcritical thinking required to participate in discussion anddebate effectively (Wilhelm, 2000: 6).

The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should be aware of thosechallenges to a deliberative environment and search forassessing those pitfalls since the Internet might also exaggerate existing inequalities in civic engagement, due in part to the"digital divide" associated with differential access to the Internetwhich is an important issue in Turkey. Another skeptical version posits theInternet as a depoliticizing medium. Just as television has been judged to be aculprit in the decline of some forms of civicengagement (Putnam 2000), so too is the Internet held suspect as potentially deflecting people from civic matters. To thedegree that the Internet becomes a social and occupational medium-via extensiveuse of e-mail-or a shopping and entertainment medium, it will serve to diminishinvolvement with civic matters. Finally, in a related vein, the Internet isalso viewed warily due to its potential for depersonalizing relationships anddepressing the stock of social capital, which-among otherqualities-consists of trusting and working with other people. Implicit here is the notion that electronic conversations,bulletin boards, chat-rooms, and virtual conferenceswhich can only be a poor match for traditional face-to-face interactions.

A Brief Lookat the Internet Use in Turkey

In order tohighlight the national NGO activities due to the possibility of interactivecommunication through the Internet in the Turkish context, three major fieldshave been selected for this study. The first one is NGOs in the area offeminism and women rights (Ka-Der and Ucan Supilrge), second in thearea of education (Tog, Egitim Gönüllüleri Vakfi) and finally an NGO examplefor disaster awareness for the earthquake-effected zones(AKUT). Prior to analyzing whether those NGOs create a virtual space by usingthe deliberative methods which can bring citizens together online with experts and empower the civic involvement inpublic life, the situation of the Internet use in Turkeyshould be pointed out.

According to a recent research conducted by usingThe World Bank data (Radikal, August 23, 2004:13),the estimated number of the Internet users is about 4.9 million. This studyalso indicates that this number increased nine times in three years3while the world average increase rate was 1.4. According to State PlanningOrganization (SPO), a state body responsible for "e-Transformation TurkeyProject" aiming to foster the evolution and to coordinate informationsociety activities, the Internet penetration is 7.1 % andit ranks far below all the EU members (Table I).4 Additionally, inWorld Economic Forum’s "Global Information Technology Report (2002-2003),different countries were ranked according to theirreadiness to information society. Among 84 countries, Finland, the US, andSingapore takes the top three, and Turkey is ranked as 50th.

Table I

Similar to most of thecountries, Internet is widely used at the universities and not surprisingly,the academic community pioneered in creating an Internetculture in Turkey. However, the Internet usage is not limitedto a number of academic institutions. Especially, banking and financial sectors

3  Between 1999-2002, the number of Internet users inTurkey increased from 450 thousand to 4.9 million. That
indicates a 988.9 % of increase.

4  Seehttp://wwvv.bilgitoplumu.gov.tr/eng/default.asp for detailed informationon "e-Transformation Turkey Project"

are leaders interms of offering a wide range of services. Since 1997, banks have beenoffering so-called ‘Internet branches’ where customers cancarry out many of the kinds of transactions they would normallydo in a regular branch office. Banks have strong incentives to move customersfrom the physical branch environment to cyber branches. For instance, cyberbanks waive the customary transaction fees and can improvethe quality of service by eliminating the waiting time in queues andfinally can provide customized services to the most profitable customers.Despite the uneven absorption of the Internet in various sectors of the Turkisheconomy, it is rather promising that in many sectors, such ashealth care and education, information and communication technologies (ICTs) became a powerful force for positive change. In fact, the realattempts in constructing an Internet culture and cybercommunities are the Internet cafes that are popping up like mushrooms in both urban and rural areas of Turkey. The exact number of those cafes isunknown. But according to various marketing research onInternet usage trends5 61.4% of all users get online at Internet cafesand these places are seen as a cheaper short-term alternative to homesubscription. The general user profile in Turkey is youngstersmostly under the age of 30 (87.7% of the overall users) having at least a highschool degree (65.8 % has high school diploma, 20.8% has 2 or 4 year-college degree),mostly male (78.5%) living in urban areas mostly in 12 big cities6(‘Face of the Web 2000 in Turkey’ Report). According toIBS’s Turkish Internet Sector Report, although the size of the ISPs marketvaries, at the beginning of 2002, there are some 80 ISPs of which the largestis SuperOnline in this booming sector.7

5 ‘Face of the Web 2000 in Turkey’ conducted byStrateji/Mori Research and Planning Co. and Ipsos Reid in December
2000 and ‘Personal Internet Usage in Turkey’ Research conducted by ArthurAndersen Management Consulting Firm in
May 2000.

6 These cities are Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Adana,Bursa, Diyarbakir, Erzurum, Antalya, Samsun, Trabzon, Denizli, and
finally Konya.

7 SuperOnline has the biggest market share with 33%.E-Kolay (15.5%), Ixir (14.1%), Turk.net (9.8%), Vestelnet
(8.1%), Turkport (6.2%), Isnet (2.8%),K05.net (2.8%), Ihlas.net (2.1%) are other major ISPs in the Turkish Internet
market (IBS Research, 2001).

Turkish NGOs’ Use of the Internet: Three Cases

The notion ofcivic culture points to the features of sociocultural world that constituteeveryday preconditions for all democratic participation. One of the mostsignificant preconditions involves engagement in thepublic sphere in the institutions of civil society. I would begin byidentifying a number of specific groups that are activelyemerged in some way within civil society and have relatively strong outwardpresence on the Net, reside at the forefront of raising awareness in the societyor alternatively, make considerable use of the Net for their own Internetactivities. Hence, three themes among many possible categories andorganizations that have an orientation to those particular themes have beenselected. The analysis of how those established NGOs working with humanitarianrelief such as AKUT (Search and Rescue Association) (http://www.akut.org.tr)and within the areas of education and feminism; TOG andKa-Der respectively, use the Internet to promote thedeliberative democracy in Turkish context can be found in the following pages. According to Tuncer Uney, project coordinator at the TurkishTelecommunications Foundation (TBV), the biggest problems are the lack ofinfrastructure and the mentality of NGOs that are far fromunderstanding the capabilities of the Internet. Uney points out that there areonly a handful of NGOs among an approximate 3000 that use theInternet efficiently. Thus, those three cases cannot be a representative sampleof Turkish NGOs and present their approach to create civic awareness butrather first voluntary efforts despite many obstacles.

A few Turkish NGOs use the Internet to build awareness, to facilitatetraining programs, to raise funds, to disseminate information andto communicate with the staff. In regard to sharing of ideas,they set up homepages with information on their organization and operations.Again a handful of them use mailing lists, newsgroups,electronic bulletin boards to create cyber-communities. Butsometimes a natural disaster plays a crucial role in understanding the power ofthe Internet. In 1999, a devastating earthquakelasting 45 seconds and 7.4 on the Richter scale hit Izmit, approximately 55 miles east-southeast of Istanbul and a followingone occurred in Düzce

after 3 months, withan official death toll of 14,095, and with a number of injured, 27,234. In the wakeof this earthquake, many international humanitarian groups offered help andassistance. However, it rapidly became apparent that one ofthe main obstacles to efficiency in conducting the rescue operation was thelack of coordination in the earthquake region. A significant contributing factor was the disruption to the telecommunications infrastructure. Allthe phone lines were overloaded even the cellularphones were not working. It soon became apparent that the only reliable working telecommunication medium was the Internet. As aconsequence, it became the medium of choice for informingvolunteers and NGOs both nationally and internationally, about the needs of theearthquake region. In order to collect medicine, food, clothes and any otherbasic goods that are needed to survive in the disaster area and also donationson the Internet, specific discussion lists were formed,whiteboards were established and many websites were set up. AKUT received 3500 e-mails in one month from people who ask for help to provide aidfor the victims. The position of an NGO like AKUTcontributed to the ideals of deliberative democracy during the naturaldisaster, carried the local concerns to the global level and put deliberativedemocracy into practice with a more informed and engaged citizenry.In an internet-based setting, AKUT’s website fosteredcommunication within relatives of the victims and acted as a forum for urgent disseminationof information. Bulletin boards, chat rooms and other technical features onAKUT’s website facilitated interactive communication among the relatives of thewounded and people living in the big cities and substitutedthe void of government officials who were harshly criticized to be late to actjust after the earthquake. To organize an effective deliberation, governmentoften needs to be involved as a participant not just thehost, however, in the case of August 1999 earthquake the government was notpart of the deliberative effort.

Anothersignificant case is Community Volunteers Foundations (TOG) (http://www.tog.org.tr) where the Internet is being used in avery efficient way with the help of a dozen young volunteers. TOG states hispurpose as "to contribute to the formation of a youth with

social awareness andself-esteem, to develop and realize various social service projects and to transformthe energy of youth towards social benefit." For instance, TOG brings upto 1000 young volunteers from all over Turkey around socialservice projects in order to create social awareness in thesociety, encourages local projects, acts as an intermediary between bigcompanies and its volunteers to find them internships, recruitscollege students to become a volunteer and member of youth council, etc. Yörük Kurtaran, field and volunteer manager of TOG,indicates that they are always online and even preferonline chatting to avoid telephone communication and he emphasizedthat they cannot imagine a world without the Internet. According to him,institutional transparency is one of the most important element and this ispossible in cyberspace. According to Evren Ergeç, the field coordinator of TOG,the NGO overcame all the technical about the access to the Internet since they have a variety of sponsors such as Garanti Bank,Lafarge Turkiye, Pfizer and also a company, Designs 4 Designers to create theirwebsite and get substantial amount of donation. They haveunmoderated chatrooms and an online forum where especially young people canpost their views. The volunteers supervize projects on bothlocal and national levels so using the Internet becomesinevitable. Their only problem seems to be the low Internet penetration insmaller cities and there are huge differences interms of theInternet use at the universities in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and other cities.

Thefinal Turkish NGO which puts the Internet at the core of their activities isthe Association for Support and Training of WomenCandidates (Ka-Der) (http://www.ada.net.tr/kader/)whose aim is to raise awareness among women to become actively involved in local and national politics. For that particular purpose,Ka-Der tries to reach out highly-educated femaleactivists who would work to increase the rate of representation of women in thepolitical arena. They mostly focus on concrete legalissues, such as making amendments in the labor law, and theConstitution in favor of women. According to Cigdem Aydin, the board memberof Ka-Der, women should be part of the political decision process to improvetheir

conditions in termsof the issues like domestic violence and rape. The volunteers’ first item ontheir agenda was to design a more user-friendly, interactiveand functional website at the time of our interviews. SelenYilmaz, specifically emphasized the significance of the Internet as a socialtool for Turkish women to escape the harsh realities of their everyday life andhow women tend to go the cyber cafes to write e-mailsto their distant relatives and share their problems with other women incyberspace. The staff of Ka-Der makes all the inter-office correspondenceonline. However, Ka-Der’s most impressive effort isdefinitely "interaktifkadin.net project" which started on February 2003 with an aim of computer literacy among women. According Ayse BilgeDicleli, the director of Ka-Der, the Internet isdeceptively portrayed as a male domain and there is a huge gender gap in termsof access to computers. For that reason, this project sets out to give threethousand women computer literacy education in six cities withthe help of major sponsors such as Microsoft and NetronInstitute of Technology. This particular project is the first step to turnwomen into e-citizens and part of the deliberativedemocracy platform.

According to Tuncer Uney, project coordinator at the TurkishTelecommunications Foundation (TBV), the biggest problems are thelack of infrastructure and the mentality of NGOs that are farfrom understanding the capabilities of the Internet. Uney points out that thereare only a handful of NGOs among an approximate 3000 thatuse the Internet efficiently. Despite all the obstacles, theTurkish NGOs mentioned briefly above use the Internet to create"communities of hope" (Davis, et.al., 2002) that are built aroundcommon beliefs, shared identities, civic discourse andcommon action. Those NGOs show effort to shape the Internet into a tool forreenergizing democracy and function as a bridge between the online deliberationand civil society in Turkey.