Representation of Syrian refeguees in the Turkish media: Discourse historical approach

In this day and age, the most important reasons of migration are the social pressure and conflicts happening in the countries. In 2011, with the start of the civil war in Syria, many Syrians have taken refuge in Turkey. Syrian refugees who took refuge in Turkey has taken a great place in Turkey's agenda and the issue is discussed extensively in the Turkish media. Studies on representations of migrants and refugees in the media show that they are often presented in the media with negative representations as 'others' such as criminals, victims and threats. In this study, news stories about Syrian refugees published in 4 Turkish newspapers (Hürriyet, Sabah, Sözcü, Posta) with the highest circulation in the country were investigated. The database consists of total 393 news stories covering the news about Syrian refugees between March 2011-2012, when Syrians first arrived and between March 2016-2017, when Syrians were relatively united with the community. The aim of this study is to determine the topoi under which Syrian refugees are represented in the news and to determine whether the frequency of these topoi varies during the periods mentioned. For this purpose, the argumantation strategy, one of the strategies put forward by Discourse Historical Approach (Wodak and Meyer, 2001) in Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze 'US' and 'THEM' representation, was used while analysing the news stories. In the scope of argumentation strategy, the topoi in the database were determined and analysed. The findings in the said period show that Syrian refugees in Turkey are thematised under 6 topoi and 13 sub-topoi. To determine the frequency of the topoi, qualitative data were indicated as quantitative data by calculating the percentages. It is found out that the frequency of the topoi differs in newspapers and periods. The results obtained show that the most frequent topoi are Refugee Flow (26.51%), Syrian Civil War (21.69%), Aid (14.46%) in the first period, and Aid (18.44%) Social Threat/Damage (12.10%), Crime (12.10%) and Victim (10.37%) in the second period. Keywords: Syrian refugees, Discourse Historical Approach, topos, news stories discourse