A Critical Discussion on Turkish Students’ Thoughts about Syrians over Nation-State Teachings

Abstract

This study is mainly based on chats with secondary and high school students. The implicit points in their daily complaints about their Syrian peers in neighborhoods were turned into a problematic for a qualitative survey. The students living in the regions in which generally Syrian immigrants are located account for the research group. The results were based on the analysis of the students’ letters they wrote to their Syrian peers in the spring of 2018: 150 letters saluting the young Syrians with “Dear my Syrian Friend” are exposed to a discourse analysis. The theoretical structure drawing classical and contemporary Marxist approaches together argues that the relationship between nationstate ideology and education creates a kind of political socialization in response to the ideal value of “fully-democratic education”. The salutations and nationalist statements that the students wrote reveal that not any mechanism of acceptance works. The students accuse the Syrians, particularly young men, of being unfaithful to their own country foremost, and of weakening the economy of the country where they took refuge by being a cheap labor force, behaving inappropriately towards the traditional and moral values, becoming a threat to Turkish language, having high fertility, taking over common spaces and behaving loosely.