This paper analyzes how conditions in Syria and experiences in Turkey shape Syrian refugees’ intentions to return over different timeframes. As of early 2021, Turkey hosted approximately 3.65 million Syrians under temporary protection.
The analysis employs a mixed-methods design, combining 41 semi-structured interviews with Syrian refugees conducted between May and December 2018, and the Syrian Barometer 2017 survey of 1,235 Syrian households across Turkey (collected between May and July 2017). The study classifies return intentions into three categories: (1) never return (no desire to return to Syria), (2) conditional return (willing to return if the war ends and/or the regime changes), and (3) unconditional return (willing to return even if the conflict persists). It examines how host-country integration shapes these intentions across three dimensions: structural integration (measured by labor market participation and education), cultural integration (assessed by Turkish language proficiency), and social integration (indicated by contact with native Turks). The analysis also considers mediating factors, such as perceived discrimination, lived experiences in Turkey, and socio-cultural distance.
Qualitative interviews highlight security and family considerations as central drivers of return intentions. Interviewees highlighted the lack of safety and stability in Syria as the primary barrier. Families—especially those with sons facing conscription risks and households with young children—expressed reluctance to return to an uncertain, unstable environment.
Descriptive statistics reveal that return aspirations are largely conditional. Most respondents would consider returning if the war ends and a new government is formed (about 63 percent), and a further 13 percent would return if the war ends regardless of regime. In contrast, 17 percent would never return, 3 percent would return even if conflict continued, and around 5 percent were undecided. Many face “involuntary stay,” with 40 percent in camps and 24 percent outside unable to return or migrate onward.
Main empirical results:
- Structural integration has no direct effect on return intentions but operates through mediators. Labor market participation is associated with heightened socio-cultural distance, indirectly increasing return aspirations. In contrast, higher education is linked to lower socio-cultural distance, indirectly reducing return aspirations.
- Turkish language proficiency is associated with lower return aspirations overall. It exerts a direct negative effect on return wishes but is also linked to higher perceived discrimination.
- Social integration reduces return intentions through direct and indirect channels. Greater contact with native Turks directly lowers the wish to return and indirectly does so by reducing perceived socio-cultural distance. At the same time, more contact can be associated with some negative experiences, which can increase return intentions.
- Negative experiences and socio-cultural distance increase conditional return intentions. Negative interactions with natives and higher perceived socio-cultural distance are positively associated with conditional return—that is, a desire to return contingent on changes such as the end of the war and/or regime change in Syria.
- Geographic closeness appears to lower perceived barriers to movement and heighten salience of home-country ties. Living in a province along the Turkish-Syrian border is positively associated with greater return wishes—both conditional and unconditional—relative to never returning.
- Longer stays reduce unconditional return intentions. A longer duration of stay in Turkey is negatively associated with unconditional return wishes compared with never returning.
- Home-country conditions primarily drive conditional return. Conditional return aspirations are chiefly shaped by factors in Syria, especially security and governance conditions linked to war cessation and regime change.
- Lower welfare in Syria increases both conditional and unconditional return. Poor welfare conditions in the origin country are significantly and positively associated with both conditional and unconditional return wishes relative to never returning.
Syrian refugees in Turkey express nuanced, largely conditional return aspirations shaped by both home-country conditions—ending the war, political change, safety, services, and livelihoods—and host-country experiences. Host-country integration interacts with these aspirations in complex ways, with language proficiency and social contact reducing return wishes, and structural integration operating indirectly through socio-cultural distance and experiences of discrimination. Taken together, these dynamics often leave refugees in an “involuntary stay” posture—unwilling to remain under current conditions yet unable to return or move elsewhere—highlighting the need to address both home-country and host-country conditions to influence return aspirations.