Cultural Differences in Turkey

Social studies Cultural differences between the youth in Turkey and the Netherlands. penn Cibii 012013001 Inhoudsopgave Introduction This project is made for the cultural studies class and will contain the differences between the younger people in Turkey and in the Netherlands. It’s common that people go abroad and face with a lot of cultural problems. This is because there are a lot of cultures and they all differ from each other. Sometimes its very difficult for people to understand cultural things that are not normal fort hem but instead normal for the people of that culture.

To understand why thats so difficult we have to look at the differences of 2 cultures. I chose Turkey and the Netherlands because i am from the Netherlands but i have a Turkish identity and i see a lot of differences between the Turkish and the Dutch people. For example i am here with a classmate who is dutch and from Holland. She is dealing with cultural differences and sometimes she really doesnt understand that some things are normal here because in Holland that things wouldn’t accepted. The differences will be measured with the study of Hofstede. Gerard Hendrick hofstede is a dutch social psychologist.

His most notable work has been in developing cultural dimensions theory. The tlve dimensions are : Individualism, masculinity power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and long term orientation. He write the books ‘Culture’s conseuenses’ and ‘cultures and organizations’. The five dimensions will be discussed in this project to define the differences between the youth in Turkey and the Netherlands. After the five dimensions the mwthodology of study will be explained that includes the participants, methodology and materials. After that the findings will be explained with charts and despriction of data.

After the findings comes the discussion with the analysis of data and what it means. At the end there wille be a conclusion which will include implications, limitations and further research and a statement. You can find the reference list and the appendices at the end of the project. Background In this paragraph I am going to explain the study of Hofstede and what all the dimensions mean. There are five dimensions which are seen as criteria to see the differences per culture. These are : Power distance, Individualism versus collectivism, Masculinitu versus femininity, uncertainty avoidance and the Long term rientation degree.

Power Distance This dimension expresses the degree to which the less powerful members of a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. The fundamental issue here is how a society handles inequalities among people. People in societies exhibiting a large degree of power distance accept a hierarchical order in which everybody has a place and which needs no further Justification. In societies with low power distance, people strive to equalise the distribution ot power and demand justification for inequalities of power. Individualism versus collectivism

The high side of this dimension, called Individualism, can be defined as a preference for a loosely-knit social framework in which individuals are expected to take care of themselves and their immediate families only. Its opposite, Collectivism, represents a preference for a tightly-knit framework in society in which individuals can expect their relatives or members of a particular in-group to look after them in exchange for unquestioning loyalty. A society’s position on this dimension is reflected in whether people’s self-image is defined in terms of “l” or “we. Masculinity versus femininity The masculinity side of this dimension represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness and material reward for success. Society at large is more competitive. Its opposite, femininity, stands for a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak and quality of life. Society at large is more consensus-oriented. Uncertainty avoidance The uncertainty avoidance dimension expresses the degree to which the members of a society feel uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.

The fundamental issue here is how a society deals with the fact that the future can never be known: should e try to control the future or Just let it happen? Countries exhibiting strong UAI maintain rigid codes of belief and behaviour and are intolerant of unorthodox behaviour and ideas. Weak I-JAI societies maintain a more relaxed attitude in which practice counts more than principles. The long term orientation The long-term orientation dimension can be interpreted as dealing with societys search for virtue.

Societies with a short-term orientation generally have a strong concern with establishing the absolute Truth. They are normative in their thinking. They exhibit great respect for traditions, a relatively small propensity to save for the uture, and a focus on achieving quick results. In societies with a long-term orientation, people believe that truth depends very much on situation, context and time. They show an ability to adapt traditions to changed conditions, a strong propensity to save and invest, thriftiness, and perseverance in achieving results.

Methodology of study participants, place (preserve anonymity) The participants for this study are the younger people between the ages 18 and 25 in the Netherlands and Turkey. I choose this as the target group because the younger people travel a lot and have to face the most and sometimes at first with cultural ifferences. They go abroad to go on vacation, to study or to live in another country. Place Because its limited to 2 countries the places of course are in the Netherlands and Turkey.

The place where the interview is held is on my school in Holland ; Fontys economische hogeschool Tilburg and my school in Turkey; Fatih university in Istanbul. I choose the school because I could find here the best participants who are speaking English and belong to the right target group. methodology (qualitative/quantitative; case study, ethnographic etc) In this study there is made qualitative and quantitative research. Quantitative research is made hrough deskresearch and qualitative research are the questions that you can’t answer with deskresearch so you need the fieldresearch for.

For the fieldresearch I made questionnaires. I decided to hold the questionnairies with 10 persons in each country. So 10 questionnaires in The Netherlands as 10 questionnairies in Turkey. The people who were asked for the questionnaires are all in the age group 18 till 25 and all speak English. I made the questions with multiple choice answers so it will be easy to process the data and make a conclusion. materials; data collection instruments (observation, questionnaires) The data ollection instruments are : internet, literature and questionnaires.