The efffect of social distance on prejuduce and discrimination: a study on Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic ethnic groups

This study aims to evaluate the relationship between Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic ethnic groups living in Turkey from the perspective of social psychology. The study examined the Perceived Discrimination levels of these three ethnic groups in terms of Social Dominance Orientation, Social Distance, Social Contact, Collective Self Esteem on the basis of Social Identity Theory. The sample of the study consisted of a total of 289 people living in Turkey's various cities, belonging to ethnic groups as 143 Turks, 75 Kurds, 58 Arabs, ages ranging from 17 to 62. "Demographic Information Form", "Collective Self-Esteem Scale", "Social Dominance Orientation Scale", "Social Contact Scale", "Perceived Discrimination Scale" and "Social Distance Scale" were applied to the participants only in the internet in order to reach people living in different cities. In this study, paired sample t test, pearson correlation analysis and regression analysis were conducted. The findings of the study although Turks and Arabs stated that they did not have perception of discrimination against ethnic groups other than themselves, Kurds stated that they perceived discrimination towards Arabs only. On the other hand, another result obtained from the study is that collective self-respect, social distance and social contact do not have a significant relationship with perceived individual and collective discrimination for Turkish, Kurdish and Arab ethnic groups, which do not show parallelism with the literature findings.