IDENTITY AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES OF SYRIAN IMMIGRANT CHILDREN IN TÜRKİYE

The aim of this research is to investigate the identity and language development processes among children from Syrian immigrant families born in Türkiye and living in accommodation centers. The study's participant population includes bilingual/multilingual individuals who speak Turkish and Arabic and are learning English as a foreign language. It's crucial to study their language and identity development processes to properly integrate these individuals into Turkish society and build an efficient language and culture education program as they interact across languages. The data for the study was collected with the participation of 100 secondary school students aged between 10 and 14 who were born or raised in Türkiye and whose families migrated to Türkiye as refugees due to the civil war in Syria. The study data was collected through an adopted questionnaire previously used in a different study (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2004) and interview questions prepared by the researcher. The findings of the study reveal that each participant identified themselves as Syrian instead of Turkish when asked about their ethnic identity. Despite being born or raised in Türkiye and learning Arabic and Turkish while growing up, it was determined that the participants formed a Syrian identity instead of a Turkish one. On the other side, it was found that while the participants were able to successfully complete the affirmation and exploration phases of the process of developing their Syrian identities, they were unable to finish the resolution stage.