An innovative step towards resolving Turkey's "headscarf conflict": assesing the aplicability of "interactive conflict resolution" at the civil society organizations level

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1150158 (Table of Contents)

Interactive Conflict Resolution (ICR) approaches are non-official methods suggesting that through sustained contact and interaction, negative perceptions and attitudes of the parties towards each other can be exchanged so that empathy can be built paving the way to the resolution of protracted conflicts. Accordingly, the objective of this study is to conduct an assessment of Turkey's 'headscarf conflict' in the context of Islamist and Kemalist CSOs. Following the findings of this assessment, conditions that should be taken into consideration for a successful ICR intervention are indicated and the applicability of the ICR approaches to the headscarf conflict is evaluated. The purpose of this endeavour is to identify the most appropriate ICR approaches for this case. Given the assessment of the headscarf conflict, the Islamist CSOs appear to strongly emphasize their needs for identity, recognition and justice, while the Kemalist CSOs indicate their needs for identity and security. Moreover, it is discovered that while certain concepts such as human rights, democracy, secularism, and women rights are shared by the adversarial parties, different values are attributed to them. The evaluation of the ICR approaches to the headscarf conflict suggests that human needs; identity; and transformation-oriented approaches appear to be the most appropriate ones in addressing the underlying causes of the conflict. Concerning the resolution of the headscarf conflict, transformation-oriented approaches appear to be the most appropriate ones for an initial ICR intervention, while communal relations and communication based approaches seem to be appropriate for a subsequent intervention.