How Turkish citizens perceive Syrian refugees: A source and valence analysis
摘要
Türkiye has become the largest refugee host country in the world after the Civil War in Syria started in 2011. There are about 3.5 million registered Syrian refugees in Türkiye, and therefore, researchers ought to scrutinize intergroup relations in the country to help reduce prejudice against refugees. Thus, in the present study, we aimed to explore intergroup relations between Syrians and Turkish citizens in Türkiye regarding the sources and valences of memories of Turkish participants narrated. We focused on understanding how Turkish people perceive Syrian refugees and what kinds of information sources shape those perceptions. We adapted McAdams' life story interview and tailored it to Syrian refugees in the Turkish context. We conducted a source and valence analysis with the narratives we collected, and the Kappa score between the two raters was above 0.84 in all questions. Chi-square results showed that gender was related to the valence of the turning points, education level was related to the sources of negative memories, and valence of vivid memories. Results also demonstrated that Turks narrated negative experiences that mainly originated from automatic judgments. We also explored that the positive experiences they described stemmed primarily from personal interactions.