How to Mitigate Polarization: An Example of Good Practice from Turkey

Polarization has been a common phenomenon that influences different societies. Especially with antagonistic political language, the rise of populism and reproductive channels such as traditional media instruments and social media platforms, as well as group-based differentiation, strengthened polarization. Individuals are more likely to follow news sources or social media accounts if they confirm their existing attitudes or opinions that allow them to receive and share similar viewpoints, restricting the opportunity to encounter differences or just ignoring the other realities as it is seen as “costly.” This creates a distance among different groups and enhances negative emotions, limiting societal consensus and pluralist understanding. In the age of poly-crisis, polarization exists as a touchstone issue, deepening group divisions between “us” and “them” through needs, demands, and rights. This context encouraged the research team to conduct a Project titled “Strategies and Tools for Mitigating Polarization in Turkey” in order to raise awareness in Turkish society about polarization and the harm it is doing and to equip individuals with tools for mitigating polarization to contribute to a new ecosystem of social harmony, human rights, and respect towards “living together” with differences. Regarding conceptualization, we focus on affective polarization that depicts supporters of different political party supporters disliking and feeling emotionally distant; furthermore, we also share a comprehensive perspective with othering through three dimensions: social distance between the political party supporters, the moral superiority for individuals’ political party supporters and political tolerance against other political parties’ supporters. The project includes an elite survey and workshop with international experts, a survey involving 4.000 respondents in 29 provinces of Turkey, and the development of a gamified online intervention tool. Tgamified online tools present a new source of information motivating individuals to reach new levels and measure for the performance. The intervention tool covers six main courses (polarization; identity formation; othering; formation of reality/truth; contact and encounters; needs, rights, and capabilities) that also include short videos or interviews with other experts from relevant areas and football team supporters. To surface more interaction and engagement for the users, quizzes, reading lists, and links regarding the podcasts, or different videos are also considered. This study seeks to demonstrate findings based on our experiences as one of the good practices to mitigate polarization. Apart from theoretical studies, dealing with the issue of dissemination was challenging; in this sense, we aim to scrutinize what we can do in the existence of a high level of polarization in everyday politics, while we are defining online tool users as change agents (who can act in mitigating polarization) as a result of knowledge, awareness, and experiences. With the purpose of developing a curriculum to mitigate polarization in different country contexts, we illustrate and evaluate how the intervention might affect participants