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Understanding Future Values: Youth and Interaction across the EU and Turkey

The European Neighbourhood Council (ENC) in cooperation with the Center for Public Policy and Democracy Studies (PODEM) have implemented a 14-month research project within the “Civil Society Dialogue between the EU and Turkey Program”(CSD-V)”, which focuses on youth perceptions in European countries and Turkey, and understanding the socio-political values of the youth and their views on EU-Turkey relations. The study focuses on university-level youth in Turkey and the selected countries of the European Union (Germany, the Netherlands, France and Belgium) with the objective to explore not only their perceptions towards life domains but also their value-sets, including but not limited to life satisfaction, family values, gender values and self-expression values, the latter of which shows the extent of shifting towards a culture of tolerance and political openness. ENC and PODEM looked at the potential impact of intercultural mobility on youth perceptions and the assumed global consciousness through a robust fieldwork study including university students from Turkey who have travelled to Europe for the Erasmus Program, and those from Europe who travelled to Turkey for the same reason. The study also seeks to gather information that would allow the exploration of university students’ attitudes toward the most pressing issues presently confronting Europe, Turkey and the EU, and how their perceptions towards Turkey and Europe, and Turkey-EU relations are evolving in line with the current political, economic and social agenda. ENC and PODEM presented the findings of their project during the final project webinar “Understanding Future Values: Youth and Interaction across the EU and Turkey” which took place on Tuesday 20th of October 2020 and featured keynote presentations by the new Head of EU Delegation to Turkey, Ambassador Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut and the Director General for Relations with the EU, Ambassador Basak Turkoglu.

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