X-Sphere Conversations About the Sustainable Cohesion of Refugee and Migrant Communities in Türkiye

Sustainable Cohesion of Refugee and Migrant Populations in Türkiye

Although Türkiye is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, the Convention’s geographic limitation means that only individuals arriving from European states are formally recognized as refugees. Migrants from other regions are instead granted only a temporary stay while awaiting potential resettlement in a third country. As a result, the vast majority of Syrians living in Türkiye continue to fall under the legal designation of “temporary protection” rather than being recognized as refugees (Dimitrova & Ozdora-Aksak, 2022). Consequently, even after more than fourteen years in the country—or in some cases, having been born there—only a limited number of Syrians have obtained Turkish citizenship. In addition, public controversy over policies that allow foreigners to acquire citizenship through property purchases has further intensified debates surrounding migrants’ access to citizenship.

We argue that refugees and migrants should be commonly analyzed through the concept of social cohesion, which is considered a prerequisite for the sustainable development of both displaced populations and host societies. Social cohesion is defined by shared values, mutual challenges, and equal opportunities, and it correlates strongly with social capital. This concept refers to a society’s capacity to foster trust and promote peaceful coexistence despite demographic and ethnic diversity (Jayakody et al., 2022). However, countries often encounter obstacles in sustainably managing a rising number of refugees (Al-Husban & Adams, 2016). While social-cohesion strategies provide a forward-looking structure for integration or eventual repatriation (Ozcurumez & Hoxha, 2020), achieving equal access to essential services, including healthcare, education, civic engagement, and gender equity, remains a significant challenge (Harris, 2000). Such challenges are particularly acute in highly polarized and legally challenging environments such as Türkiye.

In Türkiye, resistance to the presence of over 3 million refugees often arises from doubts about the sustainability of social cohesion, reflecting World Bank warnings that widening social divides increase the risk of global conflict (World Bank Group, 2022). Therefore, social cohesion is essential for promoting social justice and economic stability. United Nations (2022) research supports this, highlighting cohesion as a key driver of political stability and well-being. As sustainability increasingly shapes how institutions evaluate their impact on social and environmental systems (Finkbeiner et al., 2010), achieving their goals requires frameworks that support vulnerable populations and build resilient host communities (Missimer et al., 2017).

Pak et al. (2018) argue that achieving sustainability requires the inclusion of ecologically disadvantaged regions and economically marginalized groups in public policy. Finkbeiner et al. (2010) expand this approach using indicators that address health, gender, and political concerns. From a social-cohesion perspective, OECD (2012, p. 57) notes that societies capable of integrating minorities and cultivating a shared sense of belonging are better positioned to implement effective policies. These principles translate into practical initiatives such as protecting public health, ensuring balanced settlement, and promoting equal educational opportunities, often supported by corporate-social-responsibility efforts. When applying this framework to refugee contexts, Al-Husban and Adams (2016) highlight that the central challenge is developing resilient mechanisms to manage increased migration and adapt to changing conditions (p. 450).

More broadly, the major challenge for countries hosting refugees lies in finding long-term solutions. Their legal status as “temporary visitors” in Türkiye and the current vision of social cohesion lacks a clear, standardized framework to define refugee-integration policies and their expected outcomes across different countries. The difficulty is in evaluating the impact of social-cohesion programs, which are implemented amidst political uncertainty, economic struggles like unemployment, and social hostility toward displaced populations (Ozcurumez & Hoxha, 2020, p. 3). Türkiye’s large refugee and migrant populations necessitate the development of services and policies that ensure these groups’ social inclusion and prevent their marginalization by the local communities (Pak et al., 2018). Emergency support for their safety and security is also needed, alongside programs for sustainable growth and education of their children as part of community building (Hossain, 2021).

The potential for sustainable social cohesion is heavily influenced by the attitudes host countries have toward refugees and migrants. Research typically analyzes the variance in these attitudes through the lenses of contact theory (Pettigrew et al., 2011) and intergroup-threat theory (Blalock, 1967; Stolle et al., 2008). Contact theory posits that interaction between locals and newcomers, especially under favorable circumstances, can build understanding and reduce fear (De Coninck et al., 2020; Knappert et al., 2021; Pettigrew et al., 2011). Conversely, intergroup-threat theory suggests that growing migrant populations may trigger fears regarding competition for limited resources, leading to negative sentiment. Similarly, realistic-group-conflict theory posits that immigration often intensifies perceived economic and symbolic threats (Pettigrew, 1998; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008). These dynamics are magnified by social media, which serve as a space where public opinion is both voiced and constructed. Research indicates that online discourse regarding refugees and immigrants on X reflects the polarization of Türkiye’s political and social landscape (Bulut & Yörük, 2017). Grounded in social media’s capacity for public debate, this study investigates dominant narratives on Twitter/X concerning Turkish citizens’ views on the sustainable cohesion of diverse migrant groups.

Public Discourse on X and Refugees and Migrants

Turkish host-society discontent with migrants and refugees has grown steadily since the 2011 Syrian influx, caused by a mix of economic anxieties, perceived competition over low-wage work and public services, fears about crime and security, and cultural or symbolic threats. Their prolonged large-scale presence, rising unemployment and inflation, and uneven integration outcomes have led to increased skepticism and hostility in the host community, resulting in incidents of discrimination and calls for repatriation or stricter controls (Kirişçi, 2014). Public-opinion research in Türkiye suggests that economic worries (e.g. job-market competition, pressure on housing and services) and symbolic threats (e.g. cultural differences, social-cohesion challenges) foster negative attitudes, and fears about crime prevail in public perception (Akbulut-Yüksel et al., 2024; Uluğ et al., 2023).

Extant literature reveals that immigration has become one of the most salient and divisive issues in Türkiye’s political-communication terrain. As media and political actors continually foreground immigration in public discourse, migrant populations—particularly Syrians, Afghans, and more recently Ukrainians—have become central to polarized debates about national security, the economy, and national identity (Alakoç et al., 2022; Gülmez, 2019). Research shows that communication about migrants in Türkiye is shaped by a convergence of electoral incentives, foreign-policy concerns, and public-opinion dynamics, with political elites, news outlets, and advocacy groups strategically utilizing frames and agenda-setting techniques to influence attitudes (Balch & Balabanova, 2020; Erisen & Uysal, 2025; Manap, 2025; Mendelsohn & Budak, 2021; Sert & Danış, 2021).

Digital platforms have further intensified these dynamics. Studies reveal that social media such as Twitter/X, YouTube, and Facebook have become critical spheres where competing narratives about immigrants circulate, often amplifying security, cultural-threat, and economic frames (Akçapar & Şimşek, 2018; Doğanay & Keneş, 2016; Ozduzen et al., 2021). Research consistently stresses that anti-migrant rhetoric peaks during politically charged moments, specifically elections, and reinforces enduring “us vs. them” distinctions, with humanitarian frames receiving limited visibility (Yılmaz et al., 2023). Algorithmic amplification exacerbates this effect, as recommendation systems on platforms like YouTube and Facebook tend to push users toward increasingly extreme (e.g. anti-refugee) content, reducing exposure to alternative (e.g. humanitarian) perspectives (Çoban & İnceoğlu, 2025). Together, these studies underscore how Türkiye’s refugee debates are not merely reflections of demographic or economic realities, but are deeply mediated and politically constructed through framing, algorithmic dynamics, and discourse formation across digital and traditional platforms.

Even though public-opinion polls do generate an overview of public attitudes, issue positions, and public sentiment regarding refugees and migrant populations in Türkiye, social-media discussions can reflect stances more sincerely, as has been found in a comparative study by O’Connor et al. (2010). When assessing the role of social-media conversations in shaping public attitudes toward a highly contentious political issue in an authoritarian political context such as Türkiye (Esen & Gumuscu, 2016), it is essential to examine the social-media discourse about the cohesion and sustainability of refugees and migrant populations. Furthermore, a systematic analysis of conversations is essential given the vibrant social-media environment with diverse types of accounts sharing “news,” opinions, and affect (Meraz & Papacharissi, 2013).

The media play a critical role in shaping opinions on migration. Contact with mass-mediated content shapes attitudes toward refugees and impacts willingness to support them (Bagci et al., 2023). Although mainstream media frame audiences’ understanding of issues and their perception of the degree of deservingness of refugees (Willnat et al., 2023), social media have emerged to become complementary as well as competing venues on which the public can become informed as well as engage in building narratives, specifically through the participatory affordances of social media and other online platforms (Van der Meer & Verhoeven, 2013). However, online and social media news sources frequently fail to report accurate information regarding the settlement of refugees and migrants in a country, leading to negative perceptions of their work status, economic advantages, and criminality (Tahiroğlu, 2022). Indeed, extant literature suggests that negativity, hatred, racism, and xenophobia toward refugees and migrants do circulate on social-media platforms, contributing to negative public opinion and sentiments among host-community members (Yılmaz et al., 2023).

Beyond the debate over the relative influence of traditional and digital media sources on representations of refugees and migrant groups, there is a lack of a specific focus on what online public conversations convey about the future projections of refugee and migrant populations in Türkiye. It is timely to concentrate on uncovering how social-media conversations represent the sustainable-cohesion-related attitudes of Turkish citizens toward refugee and migrant groups in Türkiye and portray public views. To that end, we pose our first research question:

A significant disparity between the representations of two distinct groups of refugees—one white and European, the other one non-Western, non-European—suggesting a hierarchy of “worthy” versus “unworthy” refugees, fueled by apparent racism in conventional and social media, is observed in the literature (Elmas et al., 2025). For instance, Bolzoni et al. (2023) discuss the double standard in solidarity with different categories of refugees in the context of Italy after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Focusing on mainstream US newspapers, El-Nawawy and Elmasry (2024) compare the framing of Syrian and Ukrainian refugees to reveal that those outlets humanized the latter while the former were portrayed as threats and aggressors.

In a similar vein, in recent years, Türkiye has become home to Syrian, Afghan, and Ukrainian refugees, among others. An analysis of X posts on Afghan refugees in Türkiye found a predominance of negative attitudes that include dehumanization of the group and a range of perceived threats stemming from their presence (Uluğ et al., 2023). Thus, the migrant group’s origin might be a factor shaping the attitude of the host community. Indeed, recent studies have shown that specific refugee groups are represented and discussed variously on social-media platforms in Türkiye and found that Ukrainians are portrayed more positively than others (Elmas et al., 2025). Therefore, Turkish citizens’ perceptions of the cohesion of different migrant groups should be studied in online social conversations. To investigate the differences in public discourse across different migrant populations, we ask:

Data Collection and Sample Selection

DiscoverText, a tool developed by Dr. Stuart Shulman at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was utilized to collect and manage the data. DiscoverText was selected as it relies on the official application programming interface (API) to retrieve historical data while preserving the metadata, essential for analyzing user engagement and identifying opinion leaders. Employing this tool to isolate influential actors and characterize polarized discourse aligns with established practices in recent sociological research regarding political influencers and online debates (e.g., Rohlinger et al., 2023; Rose & Rohlinger, 2024). Posts containing the words “refugees, migrants, Syrian(s), Afghan(s), Ukrainian(s)” [mülteciler, göçmenler, Suriyeli(ler), Afgan(lar), Ukraynalı(lar)] and/or “temporary protection, stay, work, employment, vocation, economic contribution, support, development, future” [GKK/Geçici koruma, kalma, çalışma, ekonomi, destek, iş, katkı, kalkınma, gelecek] linked with Boolean terms were collected separately via DiscoverText.

We analyzed the sustainable-cohesion-related themes emerging from X conversations between June 23 and July 8, 2022. These 2 weeks were selected because of intensive media coverage of refugees and migrants at the time, including but not limited to (a) forced and voluntary returns of Syrians to their home country (Mepa News, 2022), (b) Greece taking more aggressive measures against refugee influx, effectively coercing migrants back into Türkiye (The Guardian, 2022), (c) Ukrainian refugees surpassing the five-million threshold worldwide (BBC, 2022) and reaching almost 150,000 in Türkiye (UNHCR, 2022), and (d) Afghan refugees’ reported involvement in sexual-violence incidents in Türkiye (Cossé, 2022; Fakih, 2022; Warsi, 2022). The sample of posts is grouped under refugees as a general category and the three different subpopulations (Syrians, Afghans, and Ukrainians).

To provide some additional detail for context, most Syrian refugees, for example, had become established all over the country by then and were having children and opening businesses, with no plans for returning home, where a civil war was still being waged. However, many news stories were about conflicts with refugees in the neighborhoods where they concentrated. The emergence of Arabic as the prevalent language of business in such areas and the perception of advantages being selectively provided to immigrants led to local dissatisfaction with and resentment against the newcomers, as the Stockholm Center for Freedom (2023, p. 35) described: “In 2022 anti-immigrant sentiment reached a boiling point, fueled by Turkey’s economic woes. Xenophobia, hate speech and hate crimes against Syrian refugees continued increasing as the country prepared for upcoming elections.” Concurrently, such sentiments were being pushed by the leader of the nationalist Victory Party, Ümit Özdağ, in his presidential-campaign rallies across the country. Adding to the refugee influx, Türkiye received more than 85,000 Ukrainian immigrants fleeing from the Russian invasion by the end of February 2022. Many settled in resort towns along the Mediterranean coast where they had previously vacationed, contributing to rising inflation and housing shortage (Akgündoğdu & Trissel, 2023). Simultaneously, Greece was taking aggressive steps to push migrants back to Türkiye—as many as 150,000 in 2022 were “averted” (Human Rights Watch, 2023).

After cleaning for non-Turkish-language content, the initial dataset consisted of 500,100 tweets. Of these, 378,290 were reposted, and 493,645 were favorited at least once. When we examine the engagement level within the dataset, 72,655 tweets were @mentioned and replied to at least once. A total of 24,804 hashtags were used. Once all reposts were excluded, the “unique tweet” count reached 38,157 (by keyword: 10,608 for “refugee(s)/immigrant(s),” 11,921 for “Afghan(s),” 11,978 for “Syrian(s),” and 3,650 for “Ukrainian(s)).”

In line with our goal to conduct a focused QCA to develop an in-depth understanding of the messages that attracted the highest attention within the period investigated, we sampled the most popular tweets, rather than running an exhaustive big-data analysis, which other studies in migrant and refugee social media representations have done. We prioritized high-engagement (“popular”) posts to capture content with genuine agenda-setting power, distinguishing our approach from random sampling, which often overrepresents isolated content. Methodological work in computational network analysis supports this choice; for instance, Choi et al. (2020) demonstrate that the top 10% of ‘hub’ communities drive over 36% of retweets, whereas nearly 92% of cascades outside these structures fail to propagate entirely.

Furthermore, our decision to sample popular rather than random posts is grounded in recent empirical research on rumor amplification, which identifies echo chambers as primary drivers of viral spread. For instance, Vosoughi et al. (2018) analyzed Twitter data and found that top 1% of shared content reached between 1,000 and 100,000 people, whereas the vast majority of information rarely exceeded 1,000 users. This indicates that a random sample would likely capture isolated content with minimal public impact. Crucially, Del Vicario et al. (2016) demonstrate that such high levels of engagement are structurally linked to the formation of homogeneous echo chambers, where selective exposure amplifies specific narratives and determines the size of diffusion cascades. Consequently, focusing on high-engagement posts is essential for analyzing the polarized discourses that successfully permeate the public agenda, distinguishing them from what might be considered low-impact noise. By doing that, we can observe the dominant discourse produced by the highest-impact X accounts. This can further provide insight into online public-opinion leaders on the sustainable cohesion of refugees and migrants in Türkiye.

Tweets with more than 100 exact duplicates as individual items in the dataset were identified, totaling 93 tweets. After discarding suspended accounts and deleted tweets (n = 4), 89 top retweeted posts constituted our final sample. The accounts from which these tweets were shared were also identified and operationalized as “most popular users”—those whose posts were retweeted at least 100 times.

Coding Instrument

The tweets were content-analyzed using a coding instrument designed to capture references to the sustainable-cohesion-related themes about migrant populations in online discussions (see Table 1 for the coding instrument). The operationalization of sustainable-cohesion-related themes was derived from extant research (Erdogan, 2022; SODEV, 2021): Turkish-citizenship-related issues, residency and residency permits in Türkiye, being guests, employment and work life of refugees, the economic contribution of refugees to the host country, national development, long-term impact, and their future projections. Beyond finding references to these themes in online conversations, we were also interested in understanding the attitudes embodied in those references. Therefore, we coded whether the tweets contained positive, negative, or neutral attitudes toward refugees and migrant groups investigated, that is, the “attitude” variable. Lastly, the account owners of the sample were coded in terms of their role, (a) activist, (b) journalist, (c) news agency, (d) citizen (regular user), and (e) politician, to determine how different user types engage with the topic, specifically in terms of the attitudes and themes previously identified.

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Table 1.

Coding Instrument.

Variable	Codes
User Role	Activist, Journalist, News agency, Citizen (regular user), Politician
Sustainable-cohesion-related themes	Citizenship, Residency, Guest, Employment & Work, Economic contribution, Development, Future projection
Attitudes toward refugees	Positive, Neutral, Negative

A spreadsheet with the metadata was prepared and each tweet was coded based on our coding instrument. Two graduate students coded the sample. Intercoder reliability tests for all the variables were run using Recal2 (Freelon, 2013). The lowest agreement level was at Krippendorff’s alpha of .84 and the highest at 1.00. Quantitative description of the data (sustainable-cohesion themes and attitudes) was calculated using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) after the raw data were coded in the spreadsheet. In addition, as a commonly utilized qualitative approach to the content analysis of media texts, the themes and attitudes were contextualized by elaborating on exemplary tweets drawn from the sample.

Ethical Considerations

Selected tweets were translated from the original language, Turkish, into English and quoted verbatim. The tweets were accessed publicly and stored in a password-protected cloud-drive folder accessible only to the authors. As is generally done with publicly available social-media data, tweets were not anonymized. However, personal and identifying information of the individuals mentioned in the sampled tweets as victims of violence has been removed from the manuscript in an effort to avoid re-traumatizing them.

Comparing Sustainable-Cohesion Themes About Different Refugee Groups in Türkiye

Employment and Contribution to the Economy and Long-Term National Development

Refugee employment and contribution to Türkiye’s economy are other contentious sustainability topics in the X-sphere. Giving Syrians jobs and work permits was criticized in many tweets. The relevant online conversations tend to be especially critical of Syrians and highlight competition over jobs in the dire economic situation of the country. Furthermore, there is fear of “outsiders” replacing the highly educated and skilled Turkish workforce, as illustrated by the following post: “Do you know that, while nearly 800,000 of our health-care workers are waiting to be appointed, 4,000 Syrian health-care workers were made civil servants?” (ATAKIZ, 2022b).

These findings align with the realistic-competition theory (Pettigrew, 1998; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008), which posits that competition over scarce resources and jobs, especially in times of national and economic turmoil, negatively shapes public attitudes toward and opinions about refugees and migrants. While losing jobs to outsiders might be a threat, outsiders not working and not contributing to the Turkish economy, being lazy and disturbing social order, displaying voyeurism, and having too many children by local standards are other concerns, as showcased in the tweet below that received a high level of responses.

The so-called ‘asylum-seeking men’ lay rugs in the playgrounds and watch Turkish mothers playing with their babies and children. No Turkish man comes to the park in my neighborhood. On the other hand, there are excessive births. When you encounter a Syrian woman, there are 4 or 5 babies with her. (Çolak, 2022)

Another variable was related to the (lack of) contribution to national development and the long-term impact of refugees in Türkiye. Although the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government portrays the “successful” integration and cohesion of refugees and migrant populations as part of national development and as a source of labor force (Cumhuriyet, 2021), X conversations indicate otherwise. Our content-analysis results suggest that X users see “outsiders” as an economic burden and hindrance to national development due to their lack of education, the need for financial support, and high reproduction rates (thus, fast population growth).

Having let 10 million refugees stay means that we have spent 100 billion dollars, and we will spend 100 billion more. This means that we will take on the health and education expenses of a population growing three times faster than we do, and find them jobs. For 10 years, we have been working for the benefit of asylum seekers. The economic crisis will not end until they leave. (Özdağ, 2022)

Security Threats

Afghans are mostly mentioned in the context of sexual perversion and overall delinquency due to perceived threats of sexual violence and crime directed at women and children. They are referred to as a population of men without jobs or any economic or social contribution to the country, who come and disrupt local peace and order. This group is unwanted in the country and needs to be sent back. Here is a sample tweet that underlines this perspective:

Life sentence without parole has been demanded for the Afghan who came here after leaving his wife, daughter, and parents, filmed the wives and daughters of our people and shared it on TikTok, and also sexually abused and killed the 16-year-old girl A… A…. in Gebze by hitting her on the head with a stone. (Mühendisyen, 2022)

Another tweet exemplifies public concerns over security threats and the risk of violence by uncontrolled Afghan groups, framing them as potential criminals. Anti-refugee, ultra-right party leader Özdağ reiterates his commitment to fighting this invasion of Türkiye by outsiders. The following tweet highlights the strength of the public support for the anti-refugee attitude.

Yesterday, 10 Afghans attacked and stabbed two Turks in Denizli. Y…. B…. needed 32 stitches. M… M…Ö… was lightly wounded. Local news does not mention Y…. The lawyers of the Denizli provincial presidency of the Zafer Party are closely following the incident. To our citizens who were attacked: Zafer Party is with you. (Özdağ, 2022)

The presence of refugees from Ukraine was also approached with skepticism, as Ukrainian men in Türkiye were regarded as not fighting for their country and enjoying peace and rest on Türkiye’s beaches. For instance: “I’m asking those who keep harping on the Syrians. Antalya’s beaches are full of Ukrainians. Have you ever heard a guy say, ‘Why are you sunbathing here? Go fight for your country, which is at war?” (Konuşmaz, 2022).

On the whole, though, compared with other refugee and migrant groups, Ukrainians were perceived as less invasive and less of a security threat. Indeed, the conflict in Ukraine was seen as contributing to Turkish economic development through military-technology innovations. The war was frequently mentioned as a testing ground for Turkish military products such as unmanned aerial vehicles.

Speaking to The Times of London, Ukrainian Bayraktar TB2 Siha Pilot: “Bayraktar TB2 Siha was hit by the Russian S-300 air defense system, we saw that it was full of holes, but it survived the attack, it came back.” #localandnationalIndustry #nationaltechnologymove. (Eurodolar1980x, 2022)

We also coded for user type in the sample. Table 4 displays the distribution of X accounts by user type. The results show that 40.5% (n = 36) of the sample (composed of popular tweets of most retweeted users that fall within the sampling period) were shared by politicians or political parties, followed by regular citizens (n = 26; 29.2%). Even though the number of unique politician or political party accounts in the sample is not high (n = 3, please see Table A1), their tweets were retweeted at much higher rates than posts by other types of accounts. This suggests that the sustainable-cohesion-related discourses about refugees and migrant populations in Türkiye during the sampling period were mainly shaped by politicians, and specifically the Victory Party and its leader, Ümit Özdağ. Özdağ’s tweets play a key role in amplifying public concerns about refugees; his discourse influences the perceptions of intergroup competition, reinforcing fears associated with realistic-group-conflict theory. In this setting, X affords the reflection and promotion of such powerful narratives, increasing Özdağ’s influence as a political actor over public attitudes and opinion.

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Table 4.

Frequency Table of User Role in the Sample.

User role	n	%
Journalist	14	15.7
News Agency	10	11.2
Citizen (regular user)	26	29.2
Politician	36	40.5
Activist	3	3.4
Total	89	100