Support for Kurdish language rights in Turkey: the roles of ethnic group, group identifications, contact, and intergroup perceptions

ABSTRACT

The question of Kurdish language rights has been a central issue in the Turkish–Kurdish conflict. The current study examined endorsement of Kurdish language rights in relation to intergroup factors (i.e. group identifications, cross-group friendships, perceived discrimination, and perceived out-group beliefs about state unity) among self-identified Turkish and Kurdish participants. The results indicate that Turks were much less in favour of these rights than the Kurds. In addition, for the Turks, higher national and ethnic identification were associated with lower support for Kurdish language rights, while cross-group friendship, perceived discrimination of Kurds and the belief that Kurds endorse national unity were associated with more support for rights. For the Kurdish participants, stronger national identification seems to undermine the mobilizing meaning that Kurdish group identification has for language rights support. Furthermore, friendship with Turks can undermine the support for rights because it strengthens national identification and reduces ethnic identification.

KEYWORDS:

• Minority rights
• ethnic identity
• dual identity
• intergroup relations
• contact
• language rights

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Language is an important marker of Turkish and Kurdish identity but this does not mean that all Kurds speak Kurdish or no Turks speak it. Yet, here we are interested in the importance of ethnic self-identification.

2. We conducted several stepwise regression analyses to explore which of the possible mediating relations is most likely in our dataset. The significant independent effect in Step 1 of higher friendship with Turks being associated with lower endorsement of Kurdish minority rights (β = −.23, t = 4.23, p < .01), was most strongly reduced (β = −.11, t = 2.08, p = .038) when national identification was added to the regression equation in Step 2, and the further addition of ethnic identification yielded a non-significant effect for cross-group friendship (β = −.06, t = 1.14, p > .05). This suggests that more Turkish friends is related to stronger national identification and weaker Kurdish identification and therefore to weaker endorsement of Kurdish language rights.