Covering Syrian asylum seekers in the Turkish press

The war in Syria has not lost its intenseness since 2011. The situation is afecting the region and world politics. Inevitably, Syrian asylum seekers became a crucial topic of Turkish media and political agendas in recent years. At the moment, Turkey is one of top countries in terms of the number of hosted asylum seekers. The issue is shaping Turkish domestic politics and it is afecting Turkey’s relationship with the world, and especially with the EU. There are some recent publications about the Syrian asylum seekers (e.g. Efe, 2015; Erdoğan, 2015). This study seeks to add new indings to the literature by looking at a diferent text sample. The study is based on a sample of 5 newspapers (Hürriyet, Sabah, Posta, Sözcü, Zaman) and looking at news reports and columns published in the year of 2014. The papers were chosen according to their political stance and their circulation igures. PRNET digital archive was employed to reach the data. The news items were collected by entering the keywords “Syrian refugees” and “Syrian asylum seekers”.