ULUSAL KİMLİK İNŞALARI VE ÖZCÜLÜĞÜN SIĞINMACI KARŞITI TUTUMLARA DAİR SONUÇLARI

Abstract

The current study investigates the relationships between essentialism, constructions of national identity, and responses toward Syrian refugees in Turkey. We draw upon the concept of essentialism, which refers to tendencies to view socially constructed categories such as race and gender as fixed, natural, strictly bounded, and informative about people’s characteristics. We extend this concept to national essentialism, which we define as beliefs that the nation is a fixed entity with clear and strict boundaries that defines the qualities of its members. We argue that such an essentialist way of thinking will predict tendencies to define a particular national identity such as Turkishness in a more exclusionary way, by emphasizing common ancestral and cultural roots, rather than by emphasizing civic bonds such as citizenship. Such an ethno-cultural construction of the national identity, in turn, is likely to feed into tendencies to exclude ethnically and culturally diverse immigrant populations within the society. We have collected data from a sample of 500 participants to test our proposed mediation model using structural equation modelling. Our analyses have shown that national essentialism predicts endorsement of an ethno-cultural construction of the Turkish national identity, which, in turn, predicts greater perceived threat posed by refugees, and greater support for anti-refugee policies. Endorsement of a civic construction of national identity does not play a mediating role in the model. Our study connects the literatures on essentialism and constructions of national identity to shed light on the psychological roots of public responses toward newcomers to societies such as refugees. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of our findings.