Diyarbakir women's self perceptions and religion in the context of social identity theory

The concept of identity is defined in many different ways in the literature. One of them is that the individual or group defines itself and at the same time positions itself within other individuals and groups. In this framework, identity refers to a process that occurs when an individual both perceives himself/herself with the influence of the environment in which he/she was born and realizes the practices in his/her perception in life. In this process, identity carries many elements, especially historical, biological, psychological, anthropological and sociological. The dimension of identity that we will focus on is psychosocial. In this context, the subject of the research is the effect of religion on the social identity and self-perception of women living in Diyarbakır. The main purpose of the research is to understand the self-perceptions of women living in Diyarbakır in the context of Tajfel and Turner's social identity theory in line with the relationship between Kurdish identity and religion from a psychosocial perspective in terms of social identity, ingroup favoritism, exaggeration effect and comparison. Semi-structured interview technique of qualitative research method was used in the study. In addition, information and documents on the subject were consulted in accordance with the documentation technique. Our study consists of three parts. In the introduction part of the study, the subject, purpose, sub-objectives, importance, scope and limitation, validity and reliability, method, data analysis, collection and interview process are given. In the first part, the conceptual and theoretical framework is discussed. In the second section, the findings are interpreted. The third section presents the discussion and conclusion. There has not been a single factor affecting the social identity of women from Diyarbakır, and this situation has varied. In the literature and data, it is seen that Kurdish participants affirm their social identity. However, this is not valid for all of them. This judgment varies according to the topics in our study. Members of the same social group do not share the same views or opinions on every issue. In addition to all these, the share of religion has a great importance in the social identity formation of women in Diyarbakır.