Intercultural communication sensitivity and perceptions of Syrian refugees in the context of social acceptance of university students: Sakarya University case

Because of Syrian civil war which is started in 2011 several million people who lose vital safety has to immigrate another countries. Turkey is hosting over 3.5 million Syrian refugee. In beginning the Syrian refugees accepted as a guest, but instability in their countries, postpone to return and which is reduce chance to go back homelands. So, the importance of Syrian refugee's adoption to the country and Turkish society's acception the refugees is increased. Syrian refugees' needs to integration to Turkish society and the Turkish society shouldn't see Syrians as a refugees they should to communicate with each other to accept Syrians as a new member of society. To commutate with different culture, people has to adequate skill of "intercultural commination". The intercultural sentiment in the perception of social acceptance for Syrian refugees and the factors that affect the perception of social acceptance towards Syrian refugees are being investigated. The universe of the research; in the academic year of 2018-2019, students of Sakarya University. The sample group is 495 university students from 12 different faculties. In order to obtain the necessary data, "Intercultural Sensitivity" and "Social Acceptance" scale were used. It is made in analyzing the datas, by means of the SPSS 24 Package Programme, correlation and simple regression analysis, single factor variance analysis (ANOVA), T test, Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis H were performed by non-parametric tests. The scores of university students on intercultural sensitivity and social acceptance scales; It was analyzed according to the gender of the students, the faculties they were studying, their presence abroad, their status as having different culture and / or friends from the country, their meeting with Syrian refugees and their willingness to be close friends with Syrian refugees. According to the analyzes, it was seen that there was a positive but low level significant relationship between the level of intercultural sensitivity of university students and social acceptance levels for Syrian refugees. As a result, it was discussed that university students had high levels of intercultural sensitivity and that social acceptance of Syrian refugees was moderate. In addition, it was observed that intercultural sensitivity and social acceptance levels were significantly higher in those who were in contact with the Syrian refugees compared to those who faced only with the Syrian refugees.