Investigation of the relationship between the self-esteem levels and the skills for establishing empathy in Turkish citizens with the perspective on Syrian immigrants

The number of Syrian immigrants has increased steadily due to the turmoil in Syria. The economic, social, and political impacts of both immigrants and neighboring countries have deepened with this immigration situation, which has reached important dimensions as with the decrease in peace opportunities, confusion and war. Besides, both the occurrence of some problems in adapting to society in Turkey and the steady state of the immigration flow in time, revealed the necessity for developing adaptation strategies for both the immigrants and Turkish citizens. Today, both the Syrian refugees in Turkey and Turkish citizens are faced with very serious problems about this issue. Therefore, it is obvious that all the studies, initiatives and researches on the subject will make contributions to literature. It has been aimed to examine the relationship between self-esteem levels and the skills for establishing empathy in Turkish citizens with the perspective on Syrians immigrants who continue to live in Turkey and to evaluate the proposals for solution. Relational scanning model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The participants of this study consisted of 373 individuals who have been involved in social media network, with ages 18-35 and have been living in Turkey in 2019-2020. Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale has been used to measure the self -esteem levels, Cambridge Empathy Scale has been used to measure the empathy levels and a socio-demographic information form which has been prepared by the researcher has been used to evaluate the demographical features of the participants in this study. All of the scales were applied through internet. According to the research results, it was been found that there was no significant relationship between self-esteem, empathy and gender; a significant relationship between self-esteem, empathy and age; a significant relationship between marital status and self-esteem, but not with empathy. In addition, it has been found that there has been a significant relationship between education level and self-esteem, but not between empathy, and also there has been no significant relationship between income level, self-esteem and empathy.