Un-Settled: Exploring Belongingness in Syrian and Ukrainian Residences in Turkey

Abstract

Today, many people, mainly due to civil wars, are forced to leave their countries and subjected to forced migration. Refugees face many difficulties because of displacement and try to rebuild their lives in another country and face some adaptation problems in the places where they try to live. (Economic, connection to the workforce, accommodation, language, exclusion, social characteristics, etc.) Relevant authorities in the receiving countries have some policies/ strategies to minimize problems such as social, economic, cultural, etc., and to put some solutions to the mutual issues that may arise. Although they try to develop integration strategies, it is noted that the strategies designed for housing are insufficient and temporary. The methods developed are not always compatible with refugees' needs, habits, lifestyles, and cultures. For this reason, refugees prefer to build or adapt new living spaces that are compatible with their lifestyles and cultures; thus, this attitude is thought to be effective in accelerating their integration processes. However, if this situation is not controlled, structures/additions that do not fit into the urban fabric will appear in areas where refugees have settled, which can be a problem for the urban fabric.

Within this framework, this study examined whether the adaptation processes that refugees begin to experience in the places where they have settled are accelerated by socio-spatial tendencies. The pre-war and current living conditions of specified refugees are compared based on the visuals and literary research conducted in the data-gathering process. According to the findings of the study, conducting on-site research on the specified area in Ankara-Önder Neighborhood for the Syrian refugees and Antalya-Alanya county for the Ukrainian refugees in Turkey, the study concluded that the adaptations made by refugees to their residence and its immediate surroundings accelerate the sense of belonging to their new living spaces and the adaptation processes in the country. Therefore, this study aims to determine the characteristics of the cultural reflections of adaptation to a new home caused by migration. After determining these characteristics, it is sought to measure whether the resulting adaptations increase the sense of belonging to the place and the effect on the permanence of the place.