According to a recent study aiming to monitor changes in values and attitudes of societies, Turkey is a country lacking self-confidence where people´s sense of happiness and material fulfillment is on the rise. The World Values Survey Association found that Turkey is distrustful of foreigners. “Active participation in politics and tolerance toward marginal groups were low. Among Turkish respondents, 25 percent viewed people unfavorably who speak a language other than Turkish. The number of people who attributed importance to freedom of expression was in decline.” The study was conducted as part of the Turkey portion of the ‘European and World Values Survey´. The survey was designed to enable a cross-national, cross-cultural comparison of values and norms on a wide variety of topics and to monitor changes in values and attitudes across the globe. This data collection contains survey data from the four waves of the World Values Surveys and European Values Surveys, carried out in 1981-1984, 1990-1993, 1995-1997, and 1999-2004. The surveys were organized by a network of social scientists.

Turkey also participated in this project in 1990. Subsequent surveys were conducted in 1996, 1997, 2000 and 2001 respectively. In late 2007 the ‘Turkish Values Survey´ was carried out through face-to-face meetings with 1,579 people in 41 cities. A parallel study called the ‘Elites Survey´ was conducted in which researchers held 226 meetings with media elites and 148 meetings with parliamentarians. Professor Yılmaz Esmer from the Bahçeşehir University School of Business Administration coordinated the survey. Esmer announced the findings at the opening of the Bahçeşehir University Center for Economic and Social Studies last week. “Turkey is a country with low self-esteem. What distinguishes us from Western Europe is the great importance we attribute to religion, the outlook on relations between men and women, the role of women in society, active participation in politics and the approach to freedoms, democratic values and tolerance, as well as interpersonal distrust,” he said.
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=96014

Very nice article, thank you Roswitha. Pretty accurate according to my own observations as well.

Very interesting and I agree with Cat, seems to be rather spot on.