Acceptance divided: an experimental study on the perceptions of Ukrainian and Syrian refugees in Turkey

This article examines how economic and cultural factors shape public acceptance by comparing attitudes toward Syrian and Ukrainian refugees in Turkey. Drawing on the Threat-Benefit Model, we embed a factorial survey experiment in a face-to-face national survey, independently varying each family’s economic self-sufficiency and religiosity. The results show that economic concerns matter, but cultural and identity-based factors dominate. Acceptance depends more on respondents’ own political identities than on refugee attributes. While religious citizens favor Syrians, secular citizens prefer Ukrainians, a divide that reflects deep polarization in Turkey. Kurdish respondents demonstrate strong solidarity with Syrians. The weight of economic credentials also depends on respondents’ intergenerational mobility. These findings show that internal societal cleavages and the evaluator’s social position shape refugee acceptance in polarized societies, where the respondent’s own position can outweigh the refugee’s attributes.