ABSTRACT

Many countries neighbouring Syria, especially Turkey, have received a large number of refugees into their lands. Even though it is temporary initially, this necessary migration flow has become a significant economic, political and social problem for the host countries. This study aimed to shed light on how ingroup identification (i.e., Turkish/Kurdish subgroup identity and Muslim superordinate identity) and contact with Syrian refugees are associated with social acceptance of Syrian refugees and what the underlying mechanism of this relation is. We examined such relationships as potentially mediated by two psychological variables: group norms and perceptions of victimhood. We conducted our study in Southern Turkey, where both the advantaged Turks and disadvantaged Kurds live homogenously, with both groups being dominantly Muslim and governed under a right wing party ruled government. Since most of the refugee-oriented studies were conducted in diverse, multicultural societies and established democracies (Louis et al., 2013; Ghosn et al., 2019), we believe that such cultural and political context, which is underrepresented in the field, is particularly interesting for examining the antecedents of social acceptance of refugees in the scope of intergroup relations.