The Relationships between In- and Out-group Perceptions and Evaluations, and the Social Identity Dimensions of Covered/Uncovered Female Students in Turkey

Allowing female students to enter universities in headscarves has long been a major goal of all Islamist political parties, whereas secularists have regarded this issue as a serious fundamentalist threat to the Turkish Republic. This study of the head coverage issue was conducted in 2006, taking a sample of 100 female university students at Uludag University in Bursa Turkey, where around half of the female students wear headscarves. Data was collected on the in-group/out-group perceptions and evaluations of both covered and uncovered students using structured and semi-structured social identity inventories, and the gathered data was examined in line with the predictions of Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory and Verkuyten’s identity dimensions of “being, ” “feeling, ” “doing ” and “knowing”. The results showed that, although the perceptions and evaluations of students with and without headscarves pointed to an in-group/out-group distinction, there were striking similarities between the identity dimensions of the two groups in several social categories