Multicultural Policies in Europe and the Adaptation of Muslim and non-Muslim Immigrants from Turkey

This research explores the adaptation of Muslim: Circassian, Kurdish, and Turkish immigrants and non-Muslim: Armenian, Assyrian and Yezidi immigrants from Turkey living in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Many people from Turkey came to Europe as guest workers, immigrants or refugees and are known as ‘Turkish’ while having diverse cultural, ethnic, religious or historical backgrounds, which might have an impact on their adaptation into the host country

In Turkey, only Armenians, Greeks and Jews were recognized as minorities and other non-Muslims: Assyrians, Yezidis, Chaldeans or Muslims: Circassians or Kurds were not. Being volunteer immigrants, such as employees who came to Europe as job seekers or non-volunteers like refugees or asylum seekers, who were forced to leave their homeland due to political ideas, ethnic, religious backgrounds or continuing wars and conflicts, may generate differences in their adaptation into the host country. The immigration stories like when, why and from which region they came from, might also affect their adaptation processes. The multicultural policies of receiving countries influence the inclusion of immigrants into the host countries.

This article features four research questions as:

-Are the adaptation processes of Muslim and non-Muslim immigrants similar in the same country?

-Are adaptation processes of the same immigrant group similar in three countries?

-Are there similar cultural peculiarities and behaviour patterns of immigrants and host groups?

-How the adaptation patterns of immigrants differentiate according to the demographics?

Three European countries are selected. Germany has low, Belgium has increasing and the Netherlands has decreasing multicultural policy implementations and index scores (Tolley, 2011; Banting and Kymlicka, 2006). A qualitative research methodology has been implemented by 60 structured (Muslims) and 18 semi structured interviews (non-Muslims). Demographics like age, gender, education, ethnic identity and period of stay will also be considered.