National Identity among a Neighboring Quartet: The Case of Greeks, Turks, Israelis, and Palestinians

Impressive similarities and telling differences characterize the representations of national identity among adolescents from four neighboring countries that are geographically interwoven and also have in common bilateral, long-dated histories of conflictual relationships--Greece, Turkey, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority. (The Israeli sample includes a separate subsample of Palestinians living in Israel.) Ethnocentrism, European integration, and attitudes towards immigration, as measured by student reponses to the Youth and History survey, are the components of national identification examined. All five groups are highly ethnocentric in relation to the rest of the students completing the survey. Greek students incorporate European cooperation in their ethnocentric conception; for Turkish, Palestinian, and Israeli-Palestinian youths, European cooperation is associated with democracy, while for Israelis it has strong humanitarian connotations. Finally, Turkish youths seem to have the most stringent criteria for conditional immigration. These results are placed within a wider theoretical context of the socio-psychological dimensions of national identity.