Abstract
Allowing female students to enter universities in headscarves has long been a major goal of all Islamist political parties, whereas secularists have regarded this issue as a serious fundamentalist threat to the Turkish Republic. This study of the head coverage issue was conducted in 2006, taking a sample of 100 female university students at Uludag University in Bursa Turkey, where around half of the female students wear headscarves. Data was collected on the in-group/out-group perceptions and evaluations of both covered and uncovered students using structured and semi-structured social identity inventories, and the gathered data was examined in line with the predictions of Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory and Verkuyten’s identity dimensions of “being,” “feeling,” “doing” and “knowing”. The results showed that, although the perceptions and evaluations of students with and without headscarves pointed to an in-group/out-group distinction, there were striking similarities between the identity dimensions of the two groups in several social categories. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p1632
Highlights
The primary aim of this study is to examine the in-group/out-group evaluations of covered/uncovered students in the light of the predictions stated in the Social Identity Theory (SIT) of Tajfel and Turner
Political Islam was not the only source of such attitudes, the findings clearly showed that the headscarf issue was religious in nature, and related to the meaning and practice of secularism in Turkey
The results showed that only the similarity-to-self ratings for the “women in general” category was statistically different for the student groups with and without headscarves, with the uncovered students tending to rate the attributes they provided for the “women in general” category as more suitable for defining themselves than did the covered participants
Summary
The primary aim of this study is to examine the in-group/out-group evaluations of covered/uncovered students in the light of the predictions stated in the Social Identity Theory (SIT) of Tajfel and Turner. The modernization efforts focused mainly on “the emancipation of women” (Göle, 1996) by means of several unprecedented legislative and governmental practices that included positive discrimination in access to education and the advent of full suffrage in 1934, as well as the banning of the veil. All of these steps were aimed at increasing the participation of women in public life, which was seen as the most important sign of modernization. As a result of this, the practices of veiling/unveiling “the body as a religious/secular space, or as a space where these forces intersect and compete” (GökarÕksel, 2009, p. 669) have always been at the core of the conflict between Islamists and secularists
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