A View of the Stereotypes of Syrian Refugees in Turkish Society
by Mahmut Sami GÜRDAL | Ozyegin University
I am an undergraduate level psychology student at Özyeğin University and am working as Dr. Rottmann’s research assistant on the Respond project. In this blog post, I would like to describe my experience in this process. Over the past few months, I gathered information about Syrians’ experiences in Turkey and how NGOs and government agencies are providing services and support for Syrians. There are a lot of negative stereotypes about Syrians in Turkey, and I know many of these stereotypes as a member of this society. Although it is possible to give many examples about this topic, I am focusing stereotypes about Syrians’ educational opportunities, effects on the labor market and government services they receive in this post. These perceptions have many sources, and I guess that social media is the most effective source. However, during the course of researching for the RESPOND project, I noticed that many of these stereotypes did not reflect reality.
My perception started to change when I examined the data I collected. I found that there are contradictions between people’s perceptions and reality in terms of Syrian migrants’ access to higher education. For example, there are 504,028 university-age Syrians (Mülteciler Derneği, 2020); however, only 27,034 Syrians could access university education in the 2018-2019 academic year (Council of Higher Education, n.d.). There is a very large gap between these two numbers, and this gap shows that the perception that Syrians are freely and easily entering university is not accurate. It is obvious that Syrians would prefer to study in a university and later have a professional job instead of working at low quality, low paid jobs, as they do now.
In addition to stereotypes about education, many people think that Syrian refugees negatively affect the economy and that they take Turkish citizens' jobs because they work for lower wages. It is not easy to find statistics about this, because many refugees do not have insurance registration. Therefore, I could not clearly access their job information. Some studies do show that they take the jobs of the lowest income workers (International Crisis Group, 2016). However, if we accept that this is true, we should also ask: who is responsible for this situation? Is it the immigrants who leave their countries and who need money for their lives, or the employers who turn the crisis into an opportunity who should be held responsible? Furthermore, I think that this situation contradicts the 8th goal of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which is the goal of decent work and economic growth. To make a long story short, I think before we blame them, we should question whether or not they are really responsible for this situation.
In addition to these stereotypes, I want to add another point as well. Many people think that governmental agencies provide many opportunities for refugees. However, in fact, these opportunities usually only consist of language courses and social adaptation activities. I tried to gather information about the work of the municipalities in Istanbul for immigrants. Firstly, I checked their websites. Many of them did not include information about this topic, and others had limited information, such as information about language courses, vocational courses, and social adaptation activities. Then, I sent e-mails to municipalities. Many of them did not answer. Others answered but wrote they would not provide information. In this process, just a few municipalities effectively answered, but they answered by providing the same information, which I had already gathered on their website. Moreover, I learned that municipalities say that they cannot provide aid to immigrants because of Turkish law (Belediye Kanunu, 2005). To make a long story short, it is not possible to say that municipalities as governmental agencies are providing tremendous aid for refugees to the extent that many people in Turkey think they are.
All in all, I gave some examples of the perceptions of Syrian refugees in this post. There are any number of other examples that I could have chosen. The main focus point of these examples are the differences between realities and people’s thoughts. We are watching a new wave of immigration, which is from Turkey to EU on television in recent days, and we witness the difficulties that these people experience and the inhumane treatment, which they face. I think it is important to empathize with them instead of blaming them, assuming that nobody would want to experience this situation.
References
Belediye Kanunu. (2005, July 3). Resmi Gazete (Sayı: 25874). Retrieved from https://www.mevzuat.gov.tr/MevzuatMetin/1.5.5393.pdf
Council of Higher Education. (n.d.). Yükseköğretim Bilgi Yönetim Sistemi. Retrieved from https://istatistik.yok.gov.tr/
International Crisis Group. (2016). Turkey’s Refugee Crisis: The Politics of Permanence. Europe Report No 241.
Mülteciler Derneği. (2020, February 20). Türkiye’deki Suriyeli sayisi Şubat 2020. Retrieved from https://multeciler.org.tr/turkiyedeki-suriyeli-sayisi/