Ethnicity and Trust in National and International Institutions: Kurdish Attitudes toward Political Institutions in Turkey

Abstract

As political trust literature has focused on its political and economical determinants, the linkage between ethnicity and trust in domestic and international institutions has been largely overlooked with a few notable exceptions. This study aims to underline this linkage and offer several hypotheses to test them in Turkish context. Using the European Social Survey conducted in 2008, this study finds that, though Kurds have low levels of trust in domestic institutions, their distrust is not uniform across all institutions. Second, it finds that Kurds are pro-international institutions; that is, compared to Turks, they hold higher trust in international institutions. Finally, it finds that, contrary to the studies on the winner/loser debate in long-standing democracies, winners in general and Kurdish winners, those who voted for the Justice and Development Party, the winning party in the 2007 election—are not distinguishable in their level of trust in political institutions from the rest of society.

Acknowledgements

I thank Kemal Karakoç, Süryal Karakoç, Fatih Mehmet Sula, Ceren Belge, Elif Erişen, Gizem Arıkan, Sema Akboğa, Başak Yavcan, Emre Erdoğan, Zeki Sarıgil, Cengiz Erişen and the participants of the workshop for this special issue as well as an anonymous reader for their insightful comments.

Notes

See Pharr and Putnam, Disaffected Democracies; Hetherington, Why Trust Matters; and Mishler and Rose, “What are the Origins of Political Trust?,” 30–62.

Hetherington, Why Trust Matters and Marien and Hooghe, “Does Political Trust Matter?,” 267–91.

Chanley, Rudolph, and Rahn. “The Origins and Consequences,” 239–56; Hetherington, Why Trust Matters; and Mishler and Rose, “What are the Origins of Political Trust?,” 30–62.

KONDA, “Kürt Meselesi'nde Algı ve Beklentiler Araştırması. Bulgular Raporu” and Koç, Hancıoğlu, and Çavlin, “Demographic Differentials and Demographic,” 447–57.

Anderson and Guillory, “Political Institutions and Satisfaction,” 66–81; Anderson et al., Losers' Consent; Anderson and Lotempio, “Winning, Losing, and Political Trust in America,” 335–51; and Anderson and Tverdova, “Winners, Losers, and Attitudes Toward Government,” 321–338.

Dowley and Silver, “Support for Europe,” 315–37; Dowley and Silver, “Social Capital, Ethnicity and Support,” 505–27; and Ehin, “Political Support in the Baltic States 1993–2004,” 1–20.

Hetherington, Why Trust Matters, 9.

Scholz and Lubell, “Trust and Taxpaying,” 398–417.

Marien and Hooghe, “Does Political Trust Matter?,” 267–91.

Mishler and Rose, “Trust, Distrust and Skepticism,” 418–51 and Mishler and Rose, “What are the Origins of Political Trust?,” 30–62.

MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson, “Peasants or Bankers?,” 597–611.

See, for example, Mishler and Rose, “What are the Origins of Political Trust?,” 30–62. For notable exceptions, see Dowley and Silver, “Support for Europe,” 315–37 and Dowley and Silver, “Social Capital, Ethnicity and Support,” 505–27.

Blendon et al., “Changing Attitudes in America,” 205–16 (208).

Lawrence, “Is It Really the Economy Stupid?,” 127.

Rahn and Rudolp. “A Tale of Political Trust,” 530–60.

King, “The Polarization of American Parties and Mistrust” and Hetherington, Why Trust Matters, 17.

Dowley and Silver, “Support for Europe,” 523.

Ehin, “Political Support in the Baltic States 1993–2004,” 1–20.

Stickley et al., “Institutional trust in Contemporary Moscow,” 779–96 and Elkins and Sides. “Can Institutions Build Unity in Multiethnic States?,” 693–708.

Data can be found at http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/

Please note that the WVS 2001 did not have the justice-system question and the WVS 1990 did not include confidence in political parties.

Tezcür, “Kurdish Nationalism and Identity in Turkey”.

Aslan, “Everyday Forms of State Power,” 75–93.

Yeğen, “The Kurdish Question in Turkish State Discourse,” 555–68.

Somer, “Resurgence and Remaking of Identity,” 591–622; van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State, the Social and Political Structures.

Barkey, “Under the Gun,” 114–32 and Aydınlı and Ozcan, “The Conflict Resolution and Counterterrorism Dilemma,” 438–57.

Smits and Gündüz-Hosgör, “Linguistic Capital,” 829–53; KONDA, “Kürt Meselesi'nde Algı ve Beklentiler Araştırması. Bulgular Raporu”.

There is an extensive literature on ethnicity and social trust in the political-psychology literature that suggests that minority groups feel excluded and marginalized from the decision-making process (e.g. Huddy, “From Social to Political Identity,” 127–56; Huddy, “Group Identity and Political Cohesion,” 65–93; Hogg, “Intragroup Processes, Group Structure, and Social Identity,” 65–93; and Hornsey, “Social Identity Theory and Self-categorization Theory,” 204–22. Building from this literature, we can argue that minority groups can view institutions as representative of the interests of the main ethnic group, and not of their own interests. For an extensive literature, we direct the reader to the social identity literature and Çiğdem V. Şirin's article in this special issue.

The gradual change from the denial of Kurds as an ethnic group toward the recognition of Kurds and their language, together with other reforms, may create positive attitudes toward political institutions among Kurds. One may argue that the economic and social policies of the AKP government have been influential in creating a bond between Kurds and both the government in particular and political institutions, leading no difference of trust in political institutions among Kurds and Turks.

Anderson and Guillory, “Political Institutions and Satisfaction,” 66–81 and Anderson et al., Losers' Consent.

Bengio, “The ‘Kurdish Spring’,” 619–32. In addition, as of the Fall, 2012, Kurdish language has also been offered as an elective course in high schools.

Bellucci, Sanders, and Serricchio. “Explaining European Identity”.

Bellucci, Sanders, and Serricchio, “Explaining European Identity”; Brewer et al., “International Trust and Public Opinion,” 93–109; and Torgler, “Trust in International Organizations,” 65–93.

Torgler, “Trust in International Organizations,” 65–93 and Erdoğan, “Determinants of Turkish Citizens' Attitudes,” 131–60.

Brewer, et al., “Do Americans Trust Other Nations?,” 36–51. Sanchez-Cuenca, “The Political Basis of Support for European Integration,” 147–72. See Hessami, “What Determines Trust in International Organizations?”. See Fischer and Hahn (Determinants of Trust in the European Central Bank) look at trust in the European Central Bank. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-opus-74646

See Bellucci, Sanders, and Serricchio, “Explaining European Identity”.

Dowley and Silver, “Support for Europe,” 315–37.

Yeğen, “Turkish Nationalism and the Kurdish Question,” 119–51 and Keck and Sikkink Activists Beyond Borders.

Casier, “Designated Terrorists,” 393–413.

Eccarius-Kelly, “Political Movements and Leverage Points,” 91–118 and Casier, “Designated Terrorists,” 393.

Robins, “More Apparent than Real,” 114–32 (127) and Saylan, “The Europeanization Process and Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey,” 185–202.

The most recent survey released is that of 2008, as Turkey was included in the ESS in 2002 and 2008, where similar sets of questions were asked. This study uses the most recent ESS survey for this analysis. More information about the ESS's sample, methodology and other important issues can be found on its website.

Due to the number of missing observations as regards the winner variable, which requires that the political-party choice of the respondents be specified, the sample shrinks significantly for some models. We also run our models using the design weight. The substantial interpretation of the results were the same.

All our main results are confirmed using Round 2 of the ESS. The only major difference is that the interaction variable for the Kurdish-winners variable is statistically significant. The results are available upon request.

Listhaug and Wiberg, “Confidence in Political and Private Institutions,” and Miller et al., “Type-set Politics,” 67–84.

Mishler and Rose, “What are the Origins of Political Trust?,” 30–62.

Listhaug and Wiberg, “Confidence in Political and Private Institutions,” 306.

About 1.5 percent of the people marked Arabic, English, German and other languages. They are excluded from the analysis. For the robustness check, we created another variable in which Arabic-speaking Turkish citizens are coded as Turks. The results are robust over different specifications. The results are available upon request.

Mishler and Rose provide an extensive summary on the determinants of political trust, and for the sake of space we refer the reader to the literature on these independent variables. See Mishler and Rose, “Trust, Distrust and Skepticism,” 418–451 and  “What are the Origins of Political Trust?,” 30–62.

The results are robust over this scaling as well.

Erdoğan, “Determinants of Turkish Citizens' Attitudes,” 131–60.

Anderson et al., Losers' Consent.

Putnam, Bowling Alone; Mishler and Rose, “What are the Origins of Political Trust?,” 30–62 and Newton, “Social and Political Trust in Established Democracies,” 169–87.

Levi (“Social and Unsocial Capital,” 45–55) argues that the direction goes from political trust to social trust, while Brehm and Rahn argue that the relationship between political and social trust is reciprocal. Others are ambiguous about the relationship between the two. In the Turkish context, persistent low social trust despite changes in political trust suggests that the causality is a major concern. The low correlation between social trust and trust in state institution (0.09) and trust in parties (0.18) suggests a weak relation between the two concepts in the Turkish context.

Verba, Schlozman, and Brady, Voice and Equality.

Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture, 1963; Listhaug and Wiberg, “Confidence in Political and Private Institutions”; and Dalton, Citizen Politics.

We employed t-test to see whether Kurds and Turks differ in their attitudes toward domestic institutions. T-test suggests these two groups are statistically different in their mean scores (p 0.001) except for trust in parliament (p 0.1)

T-test suggests these two groups are statistically different  in their mean scores (p 0.001).

Anderson and Guillory, “Political Institutions and Satisfaction,” 66–81 and Anderson et al., Losers' Consent.

T-test suggests these two groups in their trust in domestic institutions are statistically different in their mean scores (p 0.001) except for trust in parliament (p 0.1). On the other hand, t-test suggests that these two groups (Kurdish winners versus Kurdish losers) are not statistically different.

For the robustness check, other relevant variables, such as whether you are discriminated against because of your ethnicity, are added to the model. The results were robust over different model specifications. However, following Norris (“Conclusions,” 257–72), an alternative hypothesis is that high expectations among Kurds, resulting from the recent policies, have led them to become more critical of institutions, thereby reducing their trust in them. Although this is a realistic assumption, our data limitation does not allow us to test this possibility.

Running the model only Kurdish sample yields the same substantial result.

Sarıgil, “Curbing Kurdish Ethno-nationalism in Turkey,” 533–53.

The results are available upon request.

We thank the reviewer for reminding us of this important point.

Erdoğan, “Determinants of Turkish Citizens' Attitudes,” 131–60 and Hessami, “What Determines Trust in International Organizations?”.

Dowley and Silver, “Support for Europe,” 315–37 and Ehin, “Political Support in the Baltic States 1993–2004,” 1–20.

KONDA, “Kürt Meselesi'nde Algı ve Beklentiler Araştırması. Bulgular Raporu”.

Given the limitations of the data, we could not control for whether Kurds' high levels of trust in international organizations are also affected by other factors such as the anti-imperial discourse in schools and media, to which ethnic Turks may be more receptive. Nevertheless, despite of a number of control variables (not shown here), the significant difference in the levels of trust between the two groups suggests that any omitted variable will not affect the results substantially.

Gürbey, “The Development of the Kurdish Nationalism Movement in Turkey since the 1980s,” 10.