Investigating the Impact of Ethnic Policies in the Islamic Republic of Iran on the Convergence Process of Turkmen in Golestan Province

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of ethnic policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran on the convergence, or divergence, of the Turkmen in Golestan Province. The present research is applied in terms of purpose and is quantitative in terms of the nature of data and is a descriptive-survey research in terms of data collection method. The statistical population of the study, according to the census of year 2016, includes 654087 Turkmen living in Golestan province, that based on Cochran's formula, 384 of them were selected as the sample. The data collection tool was a questionnaire developed for each of the research variables, the reliability of which was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha. Data analysis was performed by SPSS 26 software. Findings from the study of research hypotheses showed that the ethnic policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on four dimensions: political, economic, cultural, and social, have created convergence on the Turkmens of Golestan province.