Factors Affecting Changes in Perceptions of Turkish People Towards Syrian Refugees

Until recently, Turkey known as a source or transit country in migration routes, transformed into a target country for refugees due to civil wars and foreign interventions in countries of the region. Refugee influxes caused by the civil war in Syria has made Turkey one of the countries with the highest refugee population in the world. With the start of the civil war in Syria, Turkey applied 'open door policy' and temporary protection was granted to all Syrians on prima facie basis. Although the adoption of the psychological threshold of 100 thousand refugees at the initial period of the crisis, threshold was exceeded in a very short time and assumptions of Turkish government about civil war have not realized. Furthermore Al-Asad regime has strengthened its position because of the disharmony and inconsistency in opposition groups. With the interval of radical islamic groups, parallel with the decline in public support in Western countries, Syrian policy of Westren governments began to change. Active support to opposition declined and civil war turned into a vicious cycle. The most significant effect of this situation on Turkey is transformation of short-term guests into permanent refugees. Prolongation of the civil war reducing the Syrian's prospects of return, made Turkey host one of the most populous diasporas in the world. With increasing economic and social burdens, Turkey's ‘human-rights based approach’ to Syrian refugee policy bagan to show signs of exhaustion and ‘security based approach’ came up to the agenda. Main factor causing this condition is perception changes of Turkish people against Syrian refugees. In this paper, factors affecting the perception of the Turkish people will be examined.