Syrian Migration and Active Citizenship in Turkey: Rethinking the Possibility of Living Together and Social Cohesion

Abstract

The sudden and intense migration that emerged as a result of the Syrian crisis in 2011 had significant effects on cities and municipalities in our country as well as in the world. Considering that the vast majority of Syrians currently live in urban areas, municipalities that have a significant proportion of Syrian immigrants compared to their resident population faced a challenge of delivering the same quality municipal services to more populations due to unexpected increase in the number of people waiting for service, but with the same budget, personnel, equipment and organizational structure. This situation negatively affects the quality of life in cities and threatens local sustainable development. The main idea of our study is to open the theoretical framework of the “active citizenship” model for discussion. The model is based on the idea that, active citizenship model is the most important resource to be mobilized in increasing the resilience of municipalities at the local level in the face of added urban issues such as mass migration and pandemic, and living together and a sustainable quality of life in cities. After making conceptual fixations in the study, answers will be sought to possible questions on how active citizens are involved in the political and social participation processes; their roles; why it is necessary to be an active citizen; how to establish an enabling environment for this to occur and what the duties of municipalities are in this context.