Institutional Authority and Traces of Intergenerational Conflict

While society's level of education increases in a modernization process, the knowledge monopoly is taken over by the young. Increasing demand on knowledge attained through organized education leads to increasing power by the young. In the modernizing society of Turkey, this kind of struggle will occur between intellectual groups. Results of this study reveal a conflict between the elder generations granted institutional authority and the young population having the capability of seizing this authority. Obtained results demonstrate that there exist remarkable negative aspects in the attitudes of the university youth towards the institutional authority of the elderly. The importance of the study lies in the fact that it is the first study introducing the concept of “intergenerational conflict” to the sociological society of Turkey and, thus, paving the way to further research.