A momentary snapshot of shallow opinion
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Oluşturulma Tarihi: Haziran 02, 2009 00:00
"Kulak’tan kulağa," literally "from ear to ear," is a popular game among Turkish children, one with equivalents in many cultures. It involves 20 or so youngsters sitting in a row. The first one utters a phrase to his neighbor, and ear to ear the sentence passes down the line. Invariably, "Ahmet wears red shorts" becomes something like, "Ahmet is short and red" by the time the message reaches the end of the line.
Which is something akin to what we see happening in the storm of analysis that has ensued following the weekend release of a study by Bahçeşehir University on levels of tolerance in the country toward different groups and lifestyles.
The conservative newspaper Zaman, for example, seized on the study as proof that much-cited peer pressure against women who eschew the Islamic headscarf is a myth. Cumhuriyet, a staunch defender of secularism, concluded the opposite: "A Society Closed to Differences," ran its headline. The same study prompted the studiously pro-government newspaper Star to announce, "Turkey has not become more religious." And meanwhile, the centrist Milliyet led its front page with the study to declare: "So Far From Tolerance."
Is the study by Professor Yılmaz Esmer of 1,714 people in 34 cities interesting? Of course it is. We ran the story yesterday prominently on the front page, too, along with a graphic noting that 72 percent of respondents don’t want neighbors who consume alcohol, 64 percent don’t want to live next to Jews, 52 percent don’t want to live near Christians, and 36 percent don’t want neighbors who wear shorts. Never mind that an informal survey of Daily News staffers revealed the sentiment that these are precisely the characteristics of a neighborhood we would like to call home.
But interesting doesn’t mean important. Such surveys may reveal an insightful slice of momentary opinion, but they hardly reveal deep and enduring values. Half of Europeans don’t know what the European Parliament does. A majority of Americans think the sun spins around the earth 500 years after Galileo proved the opposite.
Polls and surveys are valuable resources, but only if regarded as the single-frame snapshots that they are. Making broad conclusions from a survey is like heading into an exam without reading the required textbooks, making do instead with a quickly perused set of book reviews.
There is ignorance in Turkey. Deep-seated suspicion, prejudice and paranoia, too. Emotions run high over issues of religious observance and symbolism. But it is a land where tolerance has been the norm for centuries, where differences abound and are reconciled in daily life, and where the long-term trends all argue that these traditions are growing stronger, not weaker. Others may see many things in this survey. We just see a interesting questionnaire put to 1,714 people out of more than 72 million.
The conservative newspaper Zaman, for example, seized on the study as proof that much-cited peer pressure against women who eschew the Islamic headscarf is a myth. Cumhuriyet, a staunch defender of secularism, concluded the opposite: "A Society Closed to Differences," ran its headline. The same study prompted the studiously pro-government newspaper Star to announce, "Turkey has not become more religious." And meanwhile, the centrist Milliyet led its front page with the study to declare: "So Far From Tolerance."
Is the study by Professor Yılmaz Esmer of 1,714 people in 34 cities interesting? Of course it is. We ran the story yesterday prominently on the front page, too, along with a graphic noting that 72 percent of respondents don’t want neighbors who consume alcohol, 64 percent don’t want to live next to Jews, 52 percent don’t want to live near Christians, and 36 percent don’t want neighbors who wear shorts. Never mind that an informal survey of Daily News staffers revealed the sentiment that these are precisely the characteristics of a neighborhood we would like to call home.
But interesting doesn’t mean important. Such surveys may reveal an insightful slice of momentary opinion, but they hardly reveal deep and enduring values. Half of Europeans don’t know what the European Parliament does. A majority of Americans think the sun spins around the earth 500 years after Galileo proved the opposite.
Polls and surveys are valuable resources, but only if regarded as the single-frame snapshots that they are. Making broad conclusions from a survey is like heading into an exam without reading the required textbooks, making do instead with a quickly perused set of book reviews.
There is ignorance in Turkey. Deep-seated suspicion, prejudice and paranoia, too. Emotions run high over issues of religious observance and symbolism. But it is a land where tolerance has been the norm for centuries, where differences abound and are reconciled in daily life, and where the long-term trends all argue that these traditions are growing stronger, not weaker. Others may see many things in this survey. We just see a interesting questionnaire put to 1,714 people out of more than 72 million.