66 percent of Turks want Syrians to be 'sent back to their country,' survey shows

Duvar English 

The Istanbul-based Social Democracy Foundation (SODEV) has conducted a survey regarding Syrians refugees in Turkey, which involved interviews with 1,067 people on the phone.

The research revealed that 66.1 percent of the respondents said that “Syrians should be sent back to their country,” with this rate being 42.6 percent among voters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), according to reporting by online news outlet T24. 

Some 45.5 percent of survey respondents said Syrians were “dangerous people who will cause problems in the future,” and 41.7 percent said “Syrians were a burden.”

Responding to the question “How would you describe the Syrians,” 70 percent of respondents said Syrians were “unclean, unreliable and impolite,” and 57.5 percent said the Syrians were “not hardworking.”

Asked whether they would “like to have a Syrian neighbor,” 55.7 percent of the respondents said “no” and 71.5 percent said they “communicated with Syrians when they had to.”

Yet when asked whether they had “problems with Syrians”, 49.7 percent of the respondents said “no”, 35.1 percent said “sometimes” and 15.3 percent said “I do.”

What is more, when responding to the question as to whether “they have been personally harmed by Syrians in the past 5 years,” 77.3 percent said “no, I haven’t been harmed”, and when asked “has anyone in your family been harmed,” 78.1 percent said “no.”

But when asked whether “anyone around them had been harmed by Syrians,” 46.7 percent of the respondents “yes,” and 41.1 percent said “no”.

With regards to the Syrians’ economic activities, 44.2 percent of the respondents said that rather than “buying from Syrians”, they would “prefer to shop from a Turkish enterprise that carries out the same activity” and 46.7 percent said they “definitely wouldn’t buy from Syrians.”

67.1 percent of the respondents said they “didn’t approve of Syrians opening businesses” and 62.8 percent said they “never want Syrians to work in Turkey.”

66.1 percent of the participants also said that “Syrians should return to their country”, while 16.8 percent said “they should be resettled in safe areas.” 82.4 said that in the “event where the Syrian war ends”, “Syrians should return to their country.”

48.3 percent of the respondents said they found the government’s policies “very wrong”, and 18.5 percent said “wrong.”

46.3 percent of AKP voters were dissatisfied with the government’s policies regarding Syrian refugees, while the rate of dissatisfaction was 88 percent amongst main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) voters, 91.1 percent amongst Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) voters, 66.6 percent amongst Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) voters and 88.1 percent amongst İYİ (Good) Party voters.