One evening in Istanbul, while a group of friends and I were discussing the May 2023 election results, one person noted, “Every young person in this country might have a better idea than a politician; there’s no correlation between having a good idea and holding a party office.” No one was asking the country’s young people for their opinions, even though the decisions being made by our government had direct implications on our lives and futures.
Throughout history, Türkiye has followed a challenging and complex path toward democracy; going to the polls was considered a civic duty, but in the long interval between elections, the voices of citizens — especially young people — were often reduced to nothing more than the boxes checked on a survey. Categories like “I agree” or “I partially disagree” didn’t explain how our thoughts were formed, but only where they were confined. So we began to wonder: What is really going on in young people’s minds, and why doesn’t any system regularly and reliably gather this information?
This question is the origin of ReyVer. ReyVer is an independent civic initiative founded in Türkiye; its mission is to strengthen digital democratic culture and transform young people’s political participation from a one-time outburst of anger into a regular and creative habit. The name ReyVer, combines Rey (“opinion”) and Ver (“give”), means “Give Your Opinion” in Turkish, reflecting the initiative’s emphasis on active and meaningful participation. To achieve this, rather than forcing people into pre-determined boxes as traditional surveys do; we’ve built a continuous qualitative data infrastructure that seeks to understand not just “what” people think, but “why” they think that way.
How does it work? On our website, users encounter constantly updated open-ended questions related to current social and political issues. They can write a policy proposal, suggest a slogan, voice a criticism, or note a detail they believe decision-makers have overlooked. Participation can be anonymous or named; contributors who provide their names and whose insights stand out in our thematic analysis may, in the future, be invited to planned podcast and YouTube programs to elaborate on their views, listed as “policy developers” in the monthly report, and connected with relevant party leadership to contribute to the democratic opposition. In our view, this means opening a concrete channel for a generation that has grown up feeling that “no one is listening.” Moreover, we value and protect people’s right to remain “completely anonymous” — a necessity in Türkiye’s current political climate.
We have particular confidence in the section we’ve titled “Disproportionate Intelligence.” The name of this section tells a story all on its own. During the widespread protests in Türkiye in 2013, also known as the Gezi Park protests, the police responded with “disproportionate force”; young people, in turn, responded to this violent intervention with witty, sharp political critiques, and over time, the phrase “the disproportionate intelligence of young people in the face of the police’s “disproportionate force” became embedded in young people’s collective memory.
We’ve taken the name of our section from this very concept. The idea behind this section is simple but, in our view, powerful: A single sentence written by a political science student, a high school graduate, or someone who isn’t a member of any political party might contain an idea that never crossed the mind of an entire party’s central executive committee. We want to capture this “disproportionate” intelligence, document it, and bring it to light.
In our view, the most meaningful aspect of the project will be this: One day, a young person will share a truly insightful critique or an original policy proposal on our platform; we’ll highlight it in our thematic analysis and include it in our monthly report, and that young person — if they wish — will appear as a guest on a podcast in their own voice. When this young person’s idea, which no one had heard before, sparks a public debate, all our efforts will have paid off.
We don’t have a major “success story” yet because the platform is just getting started, but that’s precisely why we want to be transparent: ReyVer isn’t a project with ready-made answers; it’s a laboratory that keeps asking questions. We’ll begin to see results in our first monthly reports, in our sentiment maps, and, we hope, when we host our first “Disproportionate Intelligence” guest in a few months. We’re designing this as a long-term practice: We intend to maintain the monthly reporting cycle, update the categories based on what’s on young people’s minds, bring the discussion to social media, and continue to operate as a bridge between named participants and party officials, all based on the principles of complete voluntarism and transparency.
The most important thing we and the community around us learned during this process was this: Asking people “why do you think that way” instead of “how much do you agree” opens the door to an entirely different conversation. Quantitative metrics give us neat graphs, but they never explain why a young person doesn’t trust a particular policy or what experience led them to that view. ReyVer’s core values, such as pluralism, independence, data ethics, and transparency, arose precisely from this point: to document the reasoning behind an opinion without labeling it as right or wrong.
In Türkiye, we often hear claims that “young people aren’t interested in politics.” What we see is a different picture: Young people are definitely interested in politics — in fact, they often have far brighter ideas than leaders who’ve been in their seats for years — but there’s a lack of a channel to carry these ideas, take them seriously, and bring them to fruition. ReyVer is an attempt to build that missing channel. It’s a small, modest experiment still in its early stages, but every open-ended response, every “Disproportionate Intelligence” note from young people who will personally experience Türkiye’s next 30 years and may see problems that politicians from older generations overlook, will bring us one step closer to a more democratic Türkiye.
