Does tourism reduce prejudices between societies: Perspectives of the Ukrainian people towards Turks and Turkey, according to having holiday in Turkey; case of Kiev citizens

Turkey is of very rich tourism potential. Millions of foreign tourists visit the country every year. Incoming foreigners interact with Turkish culture and Turkish people. Therefore, foreigners' perspectives on the country and the way they perceive Turkish people may change. Utilizing Ukrainians perspectives based on whether they visited Turkey or not, the aim of this research is to examine whether tourism reduces inter-communities bias. Since the number of Ukrainian tourists visiting Turkey has increased recently, and Ukraine is among the countries that Turkish citizen have preferred for their holidays abroad in recent years, it was preferred to conduct the research on Ukrainians. In this study, the quantitative research method was used to evaluate the perspective of Ukrainians towards Turks and Turkey. The data were collected from 423 people residing in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and analyzed through multivariate statistical methods. Firstly, an exploratory factor analysis was applied, since the questionnaire was adopted from several different studies and tested for the first time in the study area. Afterwards, to test the hypotheses, t-tests, ANOVA and post hoc tests were applied. The findings reveal that tourism may lead to reduced bias between societies. It is pointed out there are differences in the perspectives of Ukrainians towards Turkey and Turks, depending on having a holiday in Turkey or not, and some demographic characteristics.