Contextual Approaches in Communication

| 17 →

A. Nevin Yıldız Tahincioğlu

The Effects of ‘Honour’ on Communication Between Turkish Immigrants and Swedes: An Example of Stockholm and Uppsala

Introduction

The variations in the sex regime are the most important among the parameters that shape the communication between the individual members of different ethnic, religious, and cultural groups. In fact, moral norms that undertake important roles in intercultural communication are associated with gender regimes. Honour as a norm that regulates sexual morality is an important aspect that has to be considered while examining the problems that are experienced by Turkish immigrants while communicating with other cultures. Looking at the discussions related to honour will make the importance of this study, the subject of which is the effects of the perception of honour to the intercultural communication of the immigrants from Turkey who are living in Stockholm and Uppsala, easier.

Honour, which includes the moral norms and prohibitions related to the sexuality of women and the fertility of women in the Meditteranean and Middle Eastern communities where Turkey is also included, describes the woman with shame and the man with glory (sheref). The sphere of influence and the degree of honour that forms the relationship of the individual with society, as well as forming the self-respect of an individual, increases with immigration and multiculturalism (Peristiany, 1965). The main reason that gave birth to honour, the roots of which goes back as far as the ancient ages, is the geographical position of the Mediterrenanean and the Middle East Regions which is open to invasions. This is because the inhabitants of this geography had to share their land and their living space with foreigners along with the invasions. The locals, who could not fight against the invaders because of their structures that are divided into tribes, have misguided their women in order to protect their biological and cultural assets from foreign blood. This fear stemming from foreign blood (i.e. from different cultures) has increased once again in multicultural structures in today’s conditions (Tillon: 2006, p. 198).

According to this logic, the protection of honour and accordingly, the affiliation and the culture, requires the isolation of women relatives from other cultures. The external interventions, which aim to convert the cultural values of minorities or ← 17 | 18 → immigrant groups, often cause an increase in the pressure on women who are members of this group.

These strengthen the reflex of protecting the private domain, which has been marked as the domain of birth, cultural, and moral values, from foreigners (Chatterjee, 2002). Additionally, this reflex is creating a strong resistance that rises against change (Kymlicka, 1998). So, the intercultural communication, which causes the differences as well as the similarities to come to light, causes the formation of a new common culture or can cause the transformation of each culture which interacts within itself (Knoblauch, 2001, p. 24).

Methods

This study is part of the big research study which has been carried out in Uppsala and Stockholm between February and July 2013 with the support of The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Within the scope of this study, the deep-interview technique has been selected as a research method which was used for collecting data about the effect of honour on communication between the Turkish migrants and Swedish people.

All questions were projected to understand whether or not honour has been considered as a barrier for intercultural communication between Turkish migrants and Swedish people. The following questions are examples of some basic-key questions used in in-depth interviews: (1) What are the cultural and moral differences between migrants who come from Turkey and Swedish people in aspects such as family life, marriage rules and ceremony, and sexual rules?; (2) What kind of cultural differences lead to conflict and segregation between Swedish and migrant people who come from Turkey?; and (3) What are the cultural and moral differences between Turkish and Swedish women?

The participants are 15 males and 15 females who have immigrated from Turkey. The age average of the people who were interviewed varied between 21 and 57 years. Half of the interviewees were male, while the other half were female. Eighteen of the 30 interviewees consisted of first-generation migrants (FGM) and rest of them were member of the second-generation migrants group (SGM). Half of the interviewees were members of the middle class (First Group: FG) and the other half of them were members of the lower-class (Second Group: SG). ← 18 | 19 →

Table 1: List of interviewees1 ^{2 3 4}

← 19 | 20 →

Findings

All of the participants in this study claimed that honour is an important cultural value for them and that they separate their culture from dominant culture and other co-culture with the norm of honour. Hayri, who is a FGM and father of two, has married someone from his hometown Ankara because of ‘honour’ which he considers as a cultural difference: “Honour is important for us. For example, we are all equal, but regarding honour, men and women are not the same. Swedes tell us, I don’t care about your honour. Our customs and manners do not mean anything to them. They do not understand, the more pressure they put on us, the more we are connected to our values. Because for us, woman means honour and this is the difference between us” (Hayri, SG, FGM).

Married, father of two, and pizza baker Sinan has stated that honour, which he sees as a “cultural difference,” is seen by all the Turkish migrants and not just by himself as a commitment to the motherland, to the nation, and to the family: “If we forget the territory, the customs and traditions from where we came, we will be destroyed. The Swedes do not understand this and we are exposed to constant pressure about this issue. They keep asking as where our women are. Women are everything for us. First of all, they are mothers for us, they are holy, they are our honour, and they are at home where they should be. This is the greatest humane difference between us anyway” (Sinan, SG, SGM).

The people who were interviewed, suffering from the efforts of the Swedes who try to convert the immigrants, are turning to ethnic and cultural groups ← 20 | 21 → who possess the closest value systems to them. Şenay, who came to Sweden as an imported bride, stated that she did not get used to Sweden at all and that the expectations of the Swedes from the immigrants is one of the top issues that she complained about the most: “First of all, they do not accept us as we are. They tell us ‘your culture is more backwards than ours.’ I do not know what they want from us. They keep talking about ‘woman, honour.’ They tell us ‘Come on be like us, go out, drink, have fun in the disco, and beyond that go out and be men and women together outside.’ They do not have a concept of honour and they do not want us to have any either” (Şenay, SG, FGM).

As the above transmitted data has indicated, the immigrants from Turkey also consider the concept of honour as a cultural item which provides cultural superiority over other cultures. A SGM, 23-year-old university graduate Semih, is among the interviewees who expressed the cultural differences between the two communities by a hierarchical ranking: “The Swedes are more educated than us, they work at good jobs. But one thing is missing there… …this is the absence of honour. So, in that respect, we are superior to them” (Semih, FG, SGM).

Honour, which is seen as a means of establishing superiority at first glance, is actually the expression of the subaltern position of the immigrants against the dominant culture. This is because the dissolution of honour would mean the disintegration of family which is the only power domain left in their hands.

Also for Suavi, married and father of three children who has been living in Sweden for nearly 30 years and lives on with unemployment benefits, the existence of honour is sufficient to cover up all deficiencies: “We came here, we left everything behind us… We were respectable families from where we came. Here you are just an immigrant. Everything from our language to our culture and even our professions became worthless. What have we got in our hands now? Only our culture and our morals. If we can not preserve them, we will be destroyed. Because here we work in jobs where they do not want to work, we collect their trash, we take care of their sick and their elderly, and we clean their dirt. But my daughter, their dirt is more than ours, let it be, they do not have any honour in the first place” (Semih, SG, FGM).

Bilal, a specialist doctor, married, and father of two children, believes that the family institution has to be protected from the Swedes in order to protect honour which is considered as the only thing left in hand. According to Bilal, “the family concept has crashed in Swedes and this collapse is also threatening their family integrity” (Bilal, FG, SGM).

The family institution in Sweden and the social status of the women is extremely scary for all the remaining male interviewees, such as this interviewee who is scared to lose what he has in his hand. At the centre of this fear that is felt ← 21 | 22 → towards the Swedish culture are the ‘sexually unsatisfied’ Swedish women in who are “masculinised” because of the “extreme freedom.”

But Zafer, who was married to a Danish lady for ten years, is extremely annoyed with this language which has been developed against the Swedish ladies. The actual issue according to Zafer is that the immigrants from Turkey have developed a racist and discriminating view towards different cultures. This view, which ensures that the immigrants survive who themselves feel weak against the Swedes, is actually damaging the communication between the two cultures: “Turkish immigrants say that Swedes or the Northern ladies have no morals. Actually the ones who have no morals are themselves. For these people morals are to be honest, to be clear and sincere. And if you talk about family, their family bonds are stronger than ours, everyone from us is leading a double life. And whoever wants to live their freedom like Fadime Şahindal is being killed by her father. Turkish men have locked their own wives at home. But they themselves are on the streets, looking for Swedish women. The Swedes have seen this dishonesty and they do not want to be abused. They ask us, where are your wives, your daughters, and your sisters?” (Zafer, FG, FGM).

The above transmitted data also indicates that the communication between two different cultures is also functioning as a cultural negotiation and as a result of this, transformations occur in both cultures. According to the expressions of the immigrants, the ‘relaxed manner’ of women is being discussed as an issue in Swedish society unlike in the past. The families advise their daughters not to be friends with the immigrants in order to not be ‘abused.’

Şahika, who is a mother of three, stated that the sexuality age in Sweden is quiet low and that this is affecting her own children: “The Swedes who were looking down on us have started to learn how to protect the ‘honour’ of their daughters from the Turkish immigrants” (Şahika, SG, FGM). What is interesting is that the Swedes are protecting their ‘honour’ from Turkish male immigrants.

This frame finds an answer in both societies which has been named as a use-being abused relation by a vast majority of the immigrants from Turkey. This is because the Swedish State, with the expression of an interviewee, has started a war against ‘honour.’ According to the majority of the interviewees, along with this war, the male immigrants from Turkey have increased the honour based pressure on female relatives even more: “If the Swedes would not talk about honour all the time and if they would not insist that our women should be like their women, neither my husband nor his family would put so much pressure on me” (Şengül, SG, FGM).

According to Zehra (26), who is a SGM and has one child, there are two parameters which are the cause of obsession of the Swedish State and society with ‘honour and the fact that the immigrant women are locked up in homes.’ One ← 22 | 23 → of the parameters is ‘the fact that the male immigrants treat the Swedish women with whom they had an affair like a dirty piece of cloth, and the second parameter is the murder of Fadime Şahindal by her father because she was living together with a Swedish man’: “The gossips which were being talked behind closed doors before and which were targeting Swedish women are now spilled. And the murder of Fadime has put the image of the Swedish in the heads of the immigrants. In other words, they said if that issue was so important for you as to kill Fadime and her lover, why did you do the same to our women for years? And this is not just living simply together and having an affair, our men do sambo with these women for years and they leave these women after many years once they got pregnant. They never call the woman or the child. I have such friends, they are 20 years old and they have not seen their fathers once” (Zehra, FG, SGM).

Unlike Zehra, the majority of the interviewees justify both these attitude towards the Swedish woman and the murder of Fadime. This frame also displays the point of views of both societies regarding the concepts of morality and violence. According to the interviewees, one of the biggest segregation points of the Swedes and the immigrants from Turkey is the approach of both societies to violence. All of the interviewees with a low education and income level, as well as many interviewees with a higher education and income level, have stated that ‘they could not explain to the Swedes that violence is from time to time a necessary method even if the issue is regarding honour.’

But according to lawyer Recep, who is also a SGM, the assertiveness of the Swedes is actually the reason of these murders: “Here, the request of the state and the community from you is quite clear: change your culture, leave your wives free. Ok it is nice, but is this mentality issue something that can be changed simultaneously? Look, Fadime’s family let their daughter study, they have sent her to another city… But she went and started to live in the same house with a Swede without being legally married and as if this was not enough, she went off to the parliament and said ‘immigrant women lead a double-life.’ The murderer here is not the uneducated father of Fadime, but the Swedish State who let Fadime go to the parliament and let her talk there. This state should try to understand the immigrants rather than forcing them” (Recep, FG, SGM).

According to the majority of the interviewees, the Swedish State has used the incident of Fadime in order to display the differences of the two cultures that emerged at the level of civilisation. A SGM, Halil, studying at the university who is a second grade relative of Fadime, calls the aftermath of the murder as a ‘cultural lynch’ as well as before the murder. According to Halil, the incident of Şahindal is a process where the Swedes have announced their own culture as more civilised and humane over the Eastern cultures. However, the Swedes are not the only ones ← 23 | 24 → that are ethnocentric. The father of Fadime who has killed her has focused on the importance of honour in terms of his culture in his defense at the court and has openly stated that he ‘has killed his daughter as she choose a Western lifestyle’ (http://bianet.org. last viewed: 08.12.2011).

These statements will become more meaningful when considered along with the language that has been developed by the immigrants against the moral values of the Swedes: “Turkish immigrants smile at the faces of the Swedes, once they turned their back they looked down on them saying that they are sluts and have no morals. They used to see their women as a prey and they did not have any respect for their men” (Nermin, FG, FGM).

Discussion

This study is part of the wide scoped study on honour and gender perspective of Turkish migrants living in Sweden, which has been realised with the post PhD research scholarship, which has been allocated to myself by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey 2013 between the months February and July. I have interviewed the immigrants who have participated in this research study within the framework of a guideline which consisted of five questions. The research data have foremostly revealed that the transformations that occurred at the immigration and multiculturalism centre line of the honour perception of Turkish immigrants affected the communication between the two cultures in an adverse manner.

The results of this research study show that all of interviewees seen honour as the important cultural right and they think that honour helps them to protect their genealogy both culturally and biologically from other ethnic and cultural groups. So, Turkish immigrants perceive honour as natural, normal, and even further as a precondition to be a human being and they take it as a basic reference point in their communication with other cultures. The absence of honour from the point of view of the immigrants is equal to the absence of culture, morals, and faith. This point of view leads to a cultural segregation which emerges from the honour centre line and consequently affects the communication between these two cultures in a negative manner.

According to this, while Turkish immigrants were criticising them on the grounds that the Swedes were “devoid of sexual morality,” the Swedish were criticising the Turkish immigrants because of their honour norms. The Swedish State and society has brought the concept of honour and the life conditions of the Turkish women for discussion, which were formed around the concept of honour along with the view points which were subjects of this discussion. These ← 24 | 25 → discussions led to the induration of the honour perception of the Turkish immigrants. The immigrants were reading the discussions and criticism in question as an intervention and attack to their culture. The negotiations between the two cultures cause various transformations in both cultures and we could even say that a new culture emerges from these two. The data that has been acquired within the context of the research study show that the concept of honour does not only affect the communication between the Turkish immigrants and the Swedes, but also cause transformations in both cultures. It is obvious that the aforementioned transformations widen the distance between the two cultures. What is more important is that the transformation that moves over ‘our women-your women’ discussions has caused the marking of the women members of both cultures as a sexual commodity and has led to the narrowing of the area of freedom.

References

Kymlicka, Will (1998). Multicultural Citizenship/The Liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Abdullah Yılmaz (Translation), Ayrıntı Publications: İstanbul.

Knoblauch, Hubert (2001). Communication, Contexts and Culture: A communicative constructivist approach to intercultural communication, In. Aldo Di Luzio (Eds.), Culture in Communication: Analyses of Interculturel Situations (pp. 3–34). John Benjamin Publising Company: Amsterdam.

Partha Chatterjee (2002). Nation and its Pieces. İsmail Çekem (Translation), İletişim Publications: İstanbul.

Peristiany, J. G. (1965). Honour and Shame in a Cyprıot Highland Village, In. J. G. Peristiany (Eds.), Honour and Shame the Values of Mediterranean Society (pp. 171–191). The University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Tillion, Germiane (2006). Harem ve Kuzenler. Şirin Tekeli and Nükhet Sirman (Translation), Metis Publications: İstanbul.

Honor crisis between the State and the municipalities in Sweden, http://bianet.org.

1.FG: First group interviewee who is a member of the middle-class.

2.SG: Second group interviewee who is a member of the lower-class.

3.FGM: First-generation migrant.

4.SGM: Second-generation migrant.

| 27 →

Adem Burak Çakmak & Barış Yavuz

A Recommendation of Using Location Density Gathered from Wireless Networks for Human Science

Introduction

Deploying big data analytics methods on mobile network subscriber’s location data not only gives an opportunity for mobile operators to bring new revenue generating products to the markets but can also be used for social benefits purposes. In this study, we will briefly explain how huge and precious mobile subscriber location density data is used for social benefits besides for business purposes, such as in the medical, disaster, and transportation planning areas. For example, if location data such as how many people has travelled from one specific area to another within a city during rush hour and which routes they have preferred can be gathered from mobile network subscriber data, then the best transportation plans can be created for city residents in order to decrease time wasted and money. We will share the statistic results for the use cases in which we have performed big data analysis on real mobile subscriber data.

Methods

Deploying business logics on big data systems is one of the popular topics among the information technology (IT) community. Services on top of data warehouses are especially common usage examples of big data technologies. By this way, corporations can easily analyse their customers regarding past expenses, behaviours, usage, etc. This makes companies eligible to offer new campaigns for extra services, to increase customer loyalty, and to conduct internal analysis.

A year ago, Turkcell launched a new service called Smart Map which is a new approach to the location based services business in which population density is considered. It is targeted to be an enriched geomarketing platform with unique Turkcell capabilities.

Turkcell has several advantages to produce such a platform. First of all, it is the biggest GSM operator in Turkey with 35 million subscribers. Turkcell also has advanced data processing know how to generate valuable information like profile, economic status, gender, marital status, and so on. ← 27 | 28 →

Another great capability of Turkcell is their network monitoring probes. These probes gather mobile signalling activities from 30,000 2G/3G base stations which cover 99.13% of the population. Activities like location update, SMS/MMS signalling, call origination/termination, and establishing data sessions are monitored by these probes and related signalling data is consolidated in a central system.

Finally, Turkcell runs periodic coverage simulations in order to calculate real coverage areas of every individual base station. After obtaining the results, the whole country is partitioned into tiny grids. Another partitioning is performed for the neighbourhoods in the residential areas. Coverage percentages of these base stations are shared into grids and neighbourhoods by also considering road networks and residential populations living in those areas.

By bringing up coverage ratios, profile information from data warehouses, and network activities from the central system for every part of the country together, the Turkcell Smart Map emerges.

One of the great advantages of the Smart Map is user lists. The system accepts custom MSISDN lists which are prepared in external platforms and produces a density map for those lists. For now, this feature is used for commercial purposes like obtaining a density map of a customer list of an enterprise.

Besides serving the geomarketing industry, this service can be used for several social problems. In this article, we will cover several social problems that Smart Maps can contribute to for research and analysis.

Findings

The main use cases for Smart Maps in social perspectives are as follows:

• Medical

• Employement