THE PERCEPTION OF DISCRIMINATION IN TURKEY
change the status of social categories of victims of discrimination. At the same
time, new NGOs aiming to fight against discrimination were founded in Turkey.
We see that comprehensive reports on discrimination in Turkey also starts to
be published followingly. Some of these publications are as follows: "Discrimination, Racism, and Hate Crimes" report by Human Rights Agenda Association
in 2005; Discrimination Monitoring Reports on four different areas ("Racial or
Ethnic Origin", "Religion or Belief", "Disability", "Sexual Orientation or Gender
Identity") prepared separately by Istanbul Bilgi University Human Rights Law
Research and Application Centre and released at different dates in 2010 and 2011;
"Discrimination Report on Turkey from the Perspective of Alevis" report which
was published with the collaboration of Alevi Cultural Associations, Middle East
Technical University, and Hacı Bektaş Veli Anatolian Culture Foundation in 2010;
"Ethnic Discrimination Report in Turkey" by The Association for Human Rights
and Solidarity for the Oppressed (Mazlum-Der) published in 2011; "Discrimination
and Right Violations Against Disabled in Turkey Report" prepared by Association
for Monitoring Equal Rights, published in 2011; "Sexual Orientation and Gender
Identity-Based Human Rights Watch Report" an annual report starting from 2013
by Pink Life LGBTI Solidarity Association and the Kaos Gay and Lesbian Cultural
Research and Solidarity Association (Kaos GL); "Ratings for Gender Equality for
81 Cities, and Equality in Education Monitoring Project" bi-annual report which
was published by Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) since
2014; International Minority Rights Group (MRG), with the partnership of the
History Foundation published the report titled "Colour, Ethnicity, Language,
Religion and Faith-based Discrimination in Turkish Education System" in 2015.
Within the same period, we also see that the issue of discrimination has gained
importance in academic publications, too. In particular, a tremendous amount of
literature started to form on gender-based discrimination in work-life, and apart
from that, there was increasing attention to examining hate speech and discriminatory discourse in the media. We can also say that there is a significant increase
in the researches about groups such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex
(LGBTI+), disabled, and elderly, groups that were subjected to discrimination has
started to be expressed and recognized after the 2000s.
The research report you are reading aims to contribute to this literature. At this
point, it can be said that this report differs from the researches of discrimination, which has been conducted by using quantitative and qualitative analysis
of discrimination cases or learning the experiences victims of discrimination,
by widely including the perpetrators and potential perpetrators of discrimination into the research space. The main objective of this research is learning the
experiences, feelings and ideas of potentially perpetrators or victims of discrimination in Turkey, and to reach some findings which would be functional and
beneficial to use in struggle for non-discrimination.
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