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Emel Altın & Murat Kasımoğlu
Active Civil Participation:
As civil activities increase in a society, voting in elections loses
its importance as a political participation activity. It is expected that young people who
are members of voluntary associations will have higher political participation in the future.
The involvement of young people in non-school activities encourages young people for
political involvement in the future, especially in volunteer organizations, developing their
representation skills, speaking in public forums, and building community identity (Eccles
and Barber 1999: 11). The voluntary activities which are attended by young people repre-
sent a social learning process for political participation. Out-of-school volunteer activities
have a long-term impact (7 to 10 years) on the political participation of young people in
the long run (McFarland and Thomas, 2006: 405). In situations where schools cannot
meet the needs of students, NGOs actively take part in helping young people identify
common interests, engage peers in action, and work in the community to change power
relationships in ways that result in meaningful institutional change (Mitra, Serriere and
Kirshner, 2014: 294). It has emerged that young people in Europe have less formal politi-
cal participation. In fact, young people are not indifferent to political participation. Instead
of participating in policy production mechanisms, youth prefer to be political consumers
and prefer to participate more unorganized political activities and online political plat-
forms. The Internet provides youth with the opportunity to obtain information, to provide
new documents, to communicate with institutions, organizations, policy makers and local
administrations. Young people do not follow politicians but follow political events (Pilking-
ton and Pollock, 2015: 4-5). In the United States, high schools support youth participa-
tion in policy making by scholarship support policy. Youth participation in American high
schools takes place in three platforms: youth activism, youth leadership and participation
in class meetings. The collective actions performed by young people to challenge the
injustices they face in their schools or in their neighborhoods may turn into political par-
ticipation in the future. In Sweden, students organize class meetings by creating a council
called the Circle Clock to participate in discussions on the main activities of schools
including teaching, learning and classroom or school-wide decision-making practices.
At these meetings, while gaining multi-faceted thinking skills by making researches and
developing practices in the fields of social studies and civil education, they try to discover
ways to give decisions about their life and society and to solve the problems of the world.
In situations where schools cannot respond to the needs of young people, NGOs actively
help them identify their common interests, enable peers to mobilize each other, and work
in the community to change power relationships in ways that result in meaningful insti-
tutional change (Mitra, Serriere and Kirshner, 2014: 294). In Şırnak, it is seen that young
people between the ages of 14 and 19 in the city center (mean of item=2,71) were not
sufficiently given the right to speak about decision-making. Young people were not ac-
tively involved in decision-making processes (mean of item=2,96), and the opportunities
for young people to participation were not enough (mean of item=2,73).
