Of The Integration, Assimilation and Social Cohesion Terms, Turkey’s Choice

Abstract

Along with a great immigration movements in recent years, Turkey has faced the problem of how do immigrants adopt to settled society. Considered as “foreigner” by settled society, immigrants have to deal with the problems of language, education, sheltering, health, finding job. Beside, unfamiliarity of socio-cultural values of settled society make their process of socialization difficult. Since integration is a frequently used term in biological and mechanical areas it has not become a favored term in definition of the relationship between settled society and immigrants. Assimilation, as any other stratgy is about relationship between immigrants and settled society, the rights which immigrants have and how will they position of their socio-cultural differences. However, Turkey has adopted the terms of neither integration nor assimilation to determine how will it build their existence in society. Turkey’s preference is using the term of “adaptation” and fictionalising strategies from the perspective of “social cohesion”. In this study, the terms of integration, assimilation and social cohesion will be discussed with literature review. Also, the meaning of Turkey’s choice on “social cohesion” for the process of immigrants’ integration and its own consolidation process will be evaluated.