EUROPE IN MIND: SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF TURKEY-EUROPE RELATIONS IN CASE OF TURKISH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Published 2013-05-01
Keywords
- Turkey-Europe relationship,
- Europe as a cultural region,
- social representation
How to Cite
Copyright (c) 2023 Ilkay SUDAS, Melek GOREGENLI
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
In this article, social representations of Europe are studied in case of Turkish university
students. The sample consists of 382 students from various departments of Faculty of Letters
at Ege University. The students were asked to write a short text on what they think on
Europe-Turkey relations and to order the first five things that the word “Europe” reminds
them of. Additionally, participants fulfilled a questionnaire containing several sociodemographic questions and specified whether they have been to Europe or not. The texts
written by students were subjected to content analysis, connotations were classified and the
results were compared as to departments. The results indicate that Turkey’s relations with
Europe for university students are independent from the historical development that it
followed in the western context and objectivity of Turkey-EU relations and social
representations of Europe have developed on ideological background more than geographical
basis.