Contribution
Description: This paper first seeks to explore the question of what we mean by using the term 'Europe'. One of the biggest ambitious political, economic as well as cultural projects of this century is the construction of the European Union, the EU. Not only does EU try to establish a political unification, but it also aims at making European cultural values or widespread phenomena across continental Europe. It is argued here that although the conceptualization of 'Europe' is mainly political question in nature, it has also cultural implications that can be seen in areas like educational systems for the 'citizens' living in the continent.
The notion of 'Europe' raises a number of questions. Chief among them whether multicultural environment of the continent has a potential for impeding the notion of shared values exemplified in the documents of the EU. In an attempt to answer this problem, we need to look at empirical studies dealing with making cross-national analysis of the youth's viewpoints in different countries of Europe. Then the second question still remains, Is there one 'Europe' in terms of cultural landscape? I investigate the second question with the help of a number of empirical studies asking the youth in several European countries how they define themselves in the context of discussions centering on what we mean by 'Europe'.
Methodology: Focusing on responses obtained from the sample of high school students in Turkey, the aim here is to turn our attention toward discussing characteristics, i.e. cultural heritage, common past, of 'being European'. Against the background of responses of the Turkish youth, this paper also addresses how Turkey would fit into the vision of 'Europe' as expressed by several citizenship education initiatives aiming at promoting 'European' values, such as democracy, human rights, rule of law etc. As a secondary analysis, I later ask how the values of Turkish youth would look like compared to students in Europe within the context of Turkey's accession talks with the EU.
Conclusions: One important conclusion is that broad policies of the EU regarding a construction of 'citizenship identity' do not necessarily translate themselves into society where citizens may hold entirely different viewpoints from what is written in official documents. Nevertheless, studies like VonBorris (1994) show clear-cut patterns regarding the civic culture among the youth in Europe.
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