Syrian perception of Yalova people: Problems and solutions

Turkey is a country with a long pass route of transit migration over the years because of its geographical location. However, due to the social and political turmoil in neighboring countries, it has recently become a target country receiving mass immigration. Especially with the 911 kilometer long border with the civil war that erupted in 2011, millions of Syrians in Syria has led to the necessity to migrate to Turkey. Turkey since the beginning of the Syrian crisis for humanitarian reasons "open door policy" has continued. As a result, massive migration waves brought the discussions on the status of migrants, citizenship, economic burden, harmony and security to the public. The Syrian crisis has been treated as a temporary situation since the beginning and Syrians have been seen as "guests". However, the absence of developments observed to facilitate the return to Syria in the period since 2011 and in the near future indicates that the process related to Syrians has evolved towards permanence. In this sense, it is essential to examine the interactions between Turkish citizens and Syrians. The study conducted examines how Turkish citizens in Yalova perceive Syrians. It was determined that the factors that Turkish citizens worry about Syrians the most are economy, security, social cohesion, education and health. Data was collected with a questionnaire to find out the opinion of Turkish citizens about Syrians. As the data collection method, both "internet based survey technique", which is one of the electronic survey types, and "face to face survey technique" have been applied. The data obtained from 436 participants with the snowball sampling method were analyzed with the help of SPSS package program. According to the findings, Turkish citizens' thoughts about Syrians were generally negative. In addition, it was observed that there was reluctance at the point of social acceptance and harmony.