Social and psychological factors affecting Iranian immigrants' religious conversion: The case of İzmir

The purpose of this study is to investigate social and psychological factors affecting the religious conversion of Iranian convert immigrants who live in Izmir. Social and psychological factors underlying the conversion were revealed in general in particular, the lives of Iranians who migrated to İzmir before the act of conversion and the processes during and after the conversion were discussed in three stages with their psychological and social dimensions. In addition, this research was conducted to contribute to the studies in the fields of psychology and sociology of religion, religions education, etc. during, before and after the conversion. The purpose of this study is to investigate social and psychological factors affecting the religious conversion of Iranian convert immigrants who live in Izmir. Tape-recorder was used while data recording. Then collected data were interpreted and evaluated. Various psychological factors have an effect on the conversion of individuals. The effect of political and religious atmosphere in Iran is observed to affect the conversion of the interviewed individuals. In addition, it can be said that the close interest by the Christian missionaries to immigrants in various deprivations, especially economic ones, was also effective in religious conversion. Keywords: Religious conversion, proselytize, Iranian immigrants, Christianity, Missionary