Examining Complex Intergroup Relations: Through the Lens of Turkey

This ground-breaking volume presents a unique contribution to the development of social and political psychology both in Turkey and globally, providing a complex analysis of intergroup relations in the diverse Turkish context.

Turkey is home to a huge variety of social, ethnic and religious groups and hosts the largest number of refugees in the world. This diversity creates a unique opportunity to understand how powerful forces of ethnicity, migration and political ideology shape intergroup processes and intergroup relations. Bringing together novel research findings, the international collection of authors explore everything from disability, age and gender, Kurdish and Armenian relations as "traditional minorities", the recent emergence of a "new minority" of Syrian refugees and Turkey’s complex political history. The theories and paradigms considered in the book – social identity, intergroup contact, integrated threat, social representations – are leading approaches in social and political psychology, but the research presented tests these approaches in the context of a very diverse and dynamic non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) society, with the goal of contributing toward the development of a more intercultural and democratic social and political psychology.

Bringing together cutting-edge research and providing important insights into the psychological underpinnings of a singular societal situation from a variety of perspectives, this book is essential reading for students studying the psychology, politics and social science of intergroup relations, as well as practitioners interested in conflict resolution.

Dr Hüseyin Çakal is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology in the School of Psychology at Keele University in the United Kingdom. His work has covered the dynamics of collective action and prejudice reduction strategies, effects of social identity and intergroup contact on health and intergroup emotions among advantaged and disadvantaged groups. He has a passion for policy-oriented research on extremely disadvantaged communities in the least accessed regions, for example, South East Asia, Latin America and in the Middle East.

Dr Shenel Husnu is a Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Psychology at Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus. She is a trainer of peace education for Turkish and Greek school children which promotes contact and cooperation between both communities. Shenel’s research interests include intergroup relations, gender and LGBTI+ issues. She has a number of publications in prejudice reduction techniques and their application to the Cyprus conflict.