Image of Syrian According to Political Party Leaders in Türkiye (2010-2023)

Abstract

Throughout history, there have been and are many migrations due to reasons such as drought, earthquake and war. While migrations sometimes lead to the development of social, political, economic and cultural relations, they sometimes cause problems in these areas. With the civil war that started in Syria in 2011, millions of people from Syria left the country and migrated to other countries with various hopes. Approximately four million people came to Turkiye, which is one of the countries of migration, in this process. After a certain period of time, a certain segment of the public and some political parties argue that Syrians should go back to their country, while a certain segment and political parties argue that it is not right for them to go back while the civil war is still ongoing in Syria. In international politics, many theories such as "image theory" have emerged with the efforts to evaluate individuals, groups or states. Image theory generally evaluates a person or society in terms of capability and culture and explains the results of this evaluation with concepts such as ally, enemy and colonial. In this context, the official "X" (Twitter) accounts of the leaders of seven political parties in Turkiye, namely the Justice and Development Party, the Republican People's Party, the Nationalist Movement Party, the IYI Party, the Peoples' Democratic Party, the Future Party and the Victory Party, were subjected to content analysis and their attitudes towards Syrians were analyzed within the framework of "image theory". For instance, it can be said that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a rogue image towards Assad and a friend and ally image towards the Syrian people, while Ümit Özdağ has a friend image towards Assad and an enemy image towards the Syrian people.

Keywords: Imagine Theory, Political Party Leaders in Turkiye, People of Syria, Civil War, Refugee