Top-Down Naturalization: Turkish Government Propensity and Syrian Refugee Attitudes

Naturalization takes place at the intersection between a host government's propensity to give citizenship and refugees' attitudes towards it. However, the naturalization of Syrian refugees, with its top-down approach, shows the possibility of a divergence between a government’s propensity and refugees’ attitudes, and that divergence may spoil the expected benefits. This study questions the factors that determine government propensity and refugees' attitude, besides the convergence and divergence between them. The regressions have been estimated using data collected from a sample of 296 Syrian students at Mardin University, Turkey. The findings of this study revealed a contradiction between attitude and propensity, although they share factors of education and the hosting context. While the indications of social and cultural integration have a positive effect on attitudes, they do not affect propensity. Besides the contextual factors of hosting province shape attitude and propensity. Moreover, the most important factor in deciding attitude is the perception of the costs and benefits of naturalization.

attitude. There may even be the possibility of a divergence between the two, which may spoil the benefits of naturalization. Thus it is important to explore the factors that determine the extent of a Syrian refugee's desire to gain Turkish citizenship.
To make a comparison between those who have obtained it and those who have not yet, and attempt, to explore the extent to which the government takes these factors into account in the process of naturalization. We hope to arrive at insights that can contribute to more informed naturalization decisions, which help use naturalization in the context of the integration in a healthy way for the benefit of both refugees and Turkish society. Thus, the principal question of this study is: are the factors that determine the attitude of Syrian refugees towards Turkish citizenship the same factors that determine the Turkish government's propensity to give it? As naturalization is an issue in the relationship between a host country and refugees, we believe that the study of naturalization would be more informed by an exploration of rational choice and symbolic approaches to study the relationships between human groups, majority and minority, or hosts and migrants. A consideration of the naturalization rate is an indication of that relationship (Grebler, 1966).
How the socio-economic and contextual factors of refugees (migrants) affect the naturalization propensity of government and the attitude of refugees also needs to be taken into account (Yang, 1994). Accordingly, the study also hopes to answer the following sub-questions: What are the characteristics of those Syrian refugees who have been chosen by the Turkish government to apply for citizenship? What factors affect Syrian refugees' attitudes towards Turkish citizenship? Is it self-interest or concerns of identity? What is the role of the host community context and refugees' socio-economic characteristics? What kind of relationship is there between the attitude of Syrian refugees towards Turkish citizenship and the Turkish government's propensity to give it? To answer those questions, the next section will explore the theoretical background, the third will review existing literature the fourth will outline the methodology of the study the findings will be presented in the fifth section before we conclude.
Theoretical Background: What are the motives that make a refugee or immigrant decide that he or she should obtain the citizenship of the host country? Trying to answer this question, many scholars affirm that naturalization should be seen as the overall result of a combination of a variety of variables and reactions, not the result of isolated factors. So, the interaction of these factors and how they combine to lead to decisions in favor of naturalization (Alvarez, 1987;Gasarasi, 1990). In investigating human behavior, and in particular, the issues of the relationship between different human groups and matters of migration (which may encompass integration and naturalization), researchers can take two perspectives, namely the rational choice perspective and the symbolic perspective. The basis of the rational choice perspective is the idea that behavior seeks to maximize individual benefit, while the symbolic perspective depends on issues of values, group identity and belonging (Kaufman, 2006). In theorizing, the rational choice perspective focuses on individual interests and opportunities or threats concerning resources, while symbolism theorists emphasize the threat to group values or the feeling of distinction and superiority (Sides & Citrin, 2007). Refugees, in general, are deprived of many of the rights that citizens enjoy, and they are considered to be outside the political, social, and economic life of the host community, so gaining citizenship is related to security, acquiring a higher status in society in the future and obtaining more rights (Kibreab, 2003).
Accordingly, the answer to the question of attitude should consider economic, social, political, and demographic factors (DeVoretz & Pivnenko, 2005). Although the pursuit of naturalization is individual behavior that is influenced by individual adaptation experiences and demographic characteristics, this behavior is conditioned by the general contexts of the country of origin and the country of destination through the overlapping roles of perceived benefits and costs and the meaning of naturalization (Yang, 1994). The final decision on citizenship adoption is a balance between advantages and disadvantages. In terms of benefits, citizenship can bring real economic benefits such as employment in the public sector, retirement pensions, bank loan facilities, or other types of financial aid. There are also social benefits to citizenship, such as achieving a positive role in the new country, and political benefits such as the opportunity to participate in political life. As for stateless persons or those without valid documents, citizenship provides them with security, removes the risk of deportation, and gives them a passport that enables them to travel abroad. The real and perceived disadvantages of gaining citizenship relate to the extent of the damage this step can do to a refugee's opportunities in their country of origin. If the country of origin allows dual citizenship, the disadvantages are reduced to a very low level (Kelley & Mcallister, 1982; "Naturalisation: A Passport for the Better Integration of Immigrants?" 2011). As for Syrian refugees in Turkey, the issue of gaining Turkish citizenship can be evaluated in the previous context.

Literature Review
Many studies have tried to address the different effects of the naturalization process on the host, country and immigrants (Bratsberg, et al., 2002;Kogan, 2003;DeVoretz, and Pivnenko, 2005;Steinhardt, 2012). Turkish citizenship can be a means to reach a safe and stable legal situation in the medium and long term, as they are only subject to "temporary" protection and are not accepted legally as refugees. They usually face a number of economic, social, and legal problems. Thus, gaining Turkish citizenship is the path for many Syrians to achieve security, access to more legal work opportunities and acceptance by the wider community (Akcapar & Simsek, 2018). However, few studies have explored refugees' attitudes towards naturalization, although the academic debate about the rate of naturalization goes back to the first decade of the last century. There was a general tendency that new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were less inclined to naturalization than Northern Europeans. Bernard (1936) referred to this as a racial bias of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The racial approach based on the distinction between old (Northern European) and new (Eastern and Southern European) immigrants and refugees has been disproved by Gavit andothers (1922, cited in DeSipio, 1987). Carpenter (1927, cited in DeSipio, 1987 who have shown that time is not important in terms of naturalization, but that economic, social, and educational factors and age at the time of migration matter. But Bernard (1936) showed that besides time, which is a necessary component for everyone, factors such as education, profession, and family income constitute the cultural environment that, in addition to personal motivations, cause differences in the rate of naturalization. Guest (1980) denied there were important differences between the 'new' and the 'old' in the naturalization rates in the United States at the beginning of the last century. But he indicated that the marginal differences between the two groups may be related to different social structures in the country of origin. The role of the relationship between the home country and the host country's context was raised by Grebler (1966), who studied the causes of the low rate of naturalization of Mexican immigrants in the United States and found that this was due to the existence of a Mexican minority community that adhered to the identity of immigrants and their relationship with the homeland, in addition to their low educational and economic status.
Later, Garcia (1981) also studied the rate of naturalization of Mexicans and confirmed that it was affected negatively by association with adherence to a Mexican identity and the continuation of ties with Mexico and positively by the length of stay in the US. However, Portes and Curtis (1987) found that individual characteristics such as age, occupation, income, and length of residence are not related to naturalization. Rather, rootedness through homeownership, the number of children the housing pattern related to neighborhood race in the United States, and barriers encountered during the period of residence are factors that increase the tendency for naturalization. A group of studies showed the development of attitudes towards naturalization in relation to concerns over the chances of returning to the origin country. Gasarasi's (1990) study, for example, summarized the process of gradual transformation, over a long period of time, of the attitude of the Rwandan refugees towards Tanzanian citizenship. Attitudes changed from skepticism and hostility to acceptance and seeking citizenship, after losing hope of returning to Rwanda. Bastaki (2020) studied the complications and doubts surrounding the issue of Palestinian refugees obtaining citizenship in other countries, as it may be a reason for losing the right of return.
The study also found that there was a positive shift towards acquiring citizenship in other countries if doing so was not considered to contradict the right of return. In contrast, another group focused on integration concerns. Diehl and Blohm (2003) explored the high rate of naturalization of Turkish immigrants in Germany, showing that their higher tendency to naturalize compared to other groups of immigrants was a result of the greater difficulties they face in trying to integrate socially and economically into German society. This was emphasized in part by Kuch (2017), who showed that for Burundian refugees, Tanzanian citizenship is a necessary step to protect their actuality. Some studies have attempted to approach the propensity to naturalization in a more comprehensive framework. Yang (1994) notes that the economic, political, social, cultural and geographical conditions in the country of origin, ethnic communities of immigrants, and urban concentration in the country of destination, affect the propensity of immigrants to naturalize and that, regardless of contextual factors, many indicators of immigrant adaptation and demographic characteristics are also important predictors of the acquisition.
Of citizenship besides the referred to possible importance of perceived costs, benefits, and meaning of naturalization. Mossaad (2018) agreed and showed that the assessment of costs and benefits is a function of social and demographic characteristics, the context of the home country, and the social environment of the host country. To the best of our knowledge, no study has drawn directly on the theories of attitudes between different social groups such as self-interest (rational choice) and symbolic approach. Moreover, there is no study on the relationship between attitude and perceptions of cost and benefits, nor are there studies that analyze how those perceptions are impacted by socio-economic, demographic factors, and the contexts of home and host countries. Even though some referred to costs and benefits, they used indirect indications of costs and benefits. Yang (1994), for instance, declared that although the role of the perceptions of benefits, costs, and the meaning of naturalization in shaping the naturalization decision is not clear, they may be the most important direct determinants of that decision. Likewise, the effect of the individual characteristics of immigrants and social contexts on naturalization decisions in forming their perceptions of costs and benefits and the meaning of naturalization is not clear. However, due to the lack of data, he did not clarify this.
Moreover, up till now, scholars have considered naturalization where the government announces its citizenship requirements and refugees (or migrants) apply when they satisfy those requirements. Thus naturalization is usually at the intersection between government propensity and refugees' attitude. This is in contrast with the Turkish naturalization of Syrian refugees, which is exceptional, where the government centrally chooses which Syrians it believes are eligible for citizenship. This exceptional, topdown approach oscillates between government standards and its desire or propensity to naturalization, and refugees' attitude. So, gaining citizenship is no longer solely an indication of refugees' attitudes that previous studies have considered. This presents a unique case for exploring government propensity and refugees' attitude and to compare them, which may enrich the literature in this field. To contribute to bridging the above-mentioned gap we studied the exceptional naturalization of Syrian refugees in Turkey. We explored, comparatively, the role of direct factors (perceptions of costs, benefits, and identity), indirect factors (socio-economic, demographic, and integration indications), and the interaction between them in shaping refugees' attitude towards citizenship and the probability of gaining it as an indication government propensity.

Methodology
The targeted population is about 1,200 Syrian students at the University of Mardin in southeastern Turkey. These students were selected as Mardin University has the highest number of Syrian students of any Turkish university with a high rate of naturalization among them. Thus, it was possible to ensure a sufficient number of naturalized, applied for nationality and non-naturalized cases in this population, sample, and for variances to be comparable and statistically meaningful within the sample. In addition, there were two secondary reasons. First, the spread of Covid 19 during data collection, between August and September 2020, made communication generally very difficult. Second, three of the researchers teach at Mardin University and were able to communicate with students easily. A questionnaire was sent to a non-random sample of the students through WhatsApp groups, from which 296 accepted answers were obtained. A two-part questionnaire was designed. The first part addressed personal issues related to socio-economics, demographics, and integration. In the second part, questions were about the degree of desire for citizenship, including perceptions of economic, political, legal, and social costs and benefits.
gaining Turkish citizenship (attitude indication), in addition to being naturalized or have applied for citizenship (propensity indication), while the independent variables, with the exclusion of home country differences as all the refugees, are Syrians and Syria accepts dual citizenship, are three groups of variables. The first group, represented by a question about the province of residency, intended to capture the hosting context variables which refer to the socio-economic conditions of the hosting province in terms of job opportunities, the concentration of refugees, and the presence of social networks to support refugees, which greatly influences the naturalization decision (Mossaad et al., 2018). A high unemployment rate in the asylum environment delays the economic, hence cultural and social integration of the refugee, and thus citizenship. Likewise, the presence of a large number of refugees or residents with similar ethno cultural characteristics, and the resulting social networks, may help social integration.
But the transformation of the resident ethno cultural situation into an ethnic enclave may impede integration and naturalization (Yang, 1994). A high degree of urbanization of the local environment has a positive effect on naturalization as it provides job opportunities, social networks, and greater mobility (Mossaad et al., 2018). However, it should be noted that the high cost of living and the abundance of unskilled labor in urban areas may have a negative impact (Mossaad, et al., 2018). The resource used for the unemployment rate in the province of residence was TURKSTAT (2019); for the ethnic composition of the province (measured by the ratio of Kurds to the population) was the uMap website; the rate of its population number to Turkey's population (as an indication of urbanization) was TURKSTAT (2019), and the ratio of Syrian refugees to the local population was Mülteciler Derneği. The second group of variables includes the socioeconomic situation, integration, and demographic variables (Mossaad, et al., 2018). With regard to socioeconomic status, Bernard (1936) indicated that people with higher formal education, occupational status, and family income, which are indicators of socioeconomic and cultural integration, are more likely to become naturalized. Cultural integration enhances immigrants' sense of belonging to the host community by enhancing their knowledge of its language, standards, values, history, government, and social systems, and thus their ability to meet the requirements of naturalization.
In addition, successful economic adjustment to the host country, such as gaining professional status higher, income, and home or company ownership, increases immigrants' commitment to society (Yang, 1994). As for the demographic variables, there may be a curved relationship between the age at immigration and naturalization. Immigrants who arrive at a young age are less likely to understand the value of citizenship and thus have a low tendency to naturalize. Immigrants who are of working age at the time of immigration, and especially those who join the workforce, are aware of the benefits of citizenship, have a greater tendency to seek naturalization. The older group of immigrants is less interested in citizenship, as they will enjoy shorter citizenship benefits and face difficulties in meeting language, education requirements, and overcoming the obligations to the home country (Yang, 1994). Thus, it is expected that as the age at immigration rises, the tendency of migrants to naturalize first increases and then decreases after a certain point in their life cycle. Some scholars expect men to have a greater tendency to acquire citizenship than women because they are more likely to work in jobs where citizenship may have an advantage. A competing hypothesis predicts the opposite, arguing that females are more vulnerable than their male counterparts and thus have stronger incentives to obtain citizenship in order to move from an unfavorable situation (Grebler, 1966;Alvarez, 1987). Another demographic feature is marital status.
Married immigrants may seek citizenship more than unmarried individuals because married people enjoy a relatively stable life and it costs those more to return to their homeland (Gerbler, 1966). For socio-economics we used ethnic origin, having Turkish relatives, the period of residency in Turkey, speaking English, having another university degree, and their department in the university. The degree of integration into Turkish society is measured by mastering the Turkish language, having an economic activity, and friendships with Turkish citizens, in addition to age, gender, and marital status. The third group is the variables related to perceived cost, benefit, and identity. Perceptions of the cost-benefit (benefits from the present) of citizenship were measured through questions related to the expected benefits and costs of obtaining citizenship in the legal, economic, political, and social areas. It is expected that they would have a positive effect on attitude. Meanwhile, perceptions of identity were measured through questions related to the degree of intolerance of Syrian identity which is expected to have a negative effect on attitude. We estimated linear regressions for the dependent variable of attitude towards naturalization. We also estimated binary logistic regressions for the dummy dependent variables of being naturalized, naturalization applied for, or not, for the government propensity.

Findings
The demographic characteristics of the sample were as follows. Gender composition was 35.8% females and 64.2% males. This corresponds with general trends that show that more males than females enroll in higher education. The age structure was: 71.5% were under 30 years and 29.5% were over 30; this corresponds to the presence of many cases of educational dropout and return among Syrians. For marital status, 39.7% were married and the remainder were single. This corresponds to the tendency for early marriage among Syrians and the high average age of students. For employment, 51% were full-time students and outside the workforce, while 8.3% were unemployed and the rest have a variety of jobs. With regard to ethnic origin, 80.8% are Arabs, 17.2% are Kurds, and 2% are Turkmen. This is close to the composition of the Syrian population, in which the Arabs are the majority, followed by Kurds, and then Turkmen. The academic specializations were: 47% Business Management, 34.3% Political Science, 11.9% Sociology, and 6.6% History; this corresponds to the numbers attending each department. The reliability of the questionnaire was evaluated by the Cronbach Alpha test, which measures the internal consistency of the questionnaire's questions. The results are presented in Table 1. It is clear from table 1 that the questions of the variables are of acceptable internal consistency, as their coefficients exceed 0.60 (minimum acceptable value), except for the legal variable, which is less than 0.60. This may be due to the possibility of interaction between the variables, given that most legal issues have economic, social, or political aspects. Besides, legal language terms are specialized and are likely to be interpreted ambiguously. In order to obtain a comparative initial assessment of perceptions of benefits and identity, and attitude, we computed the mean of these variables. Table 2 shows the mean of the variables concerned. It is evident from table 2 that there is a strong desire for naturalization among the sample in general, where the mean exceeds 4 out of 5, by the Likert five-point scale, where the highest level that can be expressed is 5.
In terms of the benefits of naturalization, it appears that the legal benefit is the highest, followed by economic, social, and political. This is in line with some views of needs and their hierarchy in seeking to satisfy them, such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Kottler, 2008: 163) for example. Legal motivation is the strongest because it satisfies the needs of security and stability. Next, comes the economic motive, which captures the need to work and have a constant income the social motive, which focuses on the needs of belonging, cooperation, harmony, and social acceptance, and the political motive. Regarding Syrian identity, it seems that adherence to it is weak as the mean of the sample is 2.89, less than the average level 3 on the five-point scale. This may be due to the existence of an inherent problem in the formation of this identity. To understand the relationships between perceptions of benefits and identity on one side, and demographics, socio-economics, integration indication, and hosting context on the other, we estimated four linear regressions Model 1, Model 2, Model 3, and Model 4. These regressions will also help us to see the indirect impact of those factors, through the perceptions, on the attitude towards naturalization. Table 3 contains those four regressions. Model 1 is the regression of the perception of the economic benefits of citizenship on the dependent variable. Only the coefficients of the three factors are significant. Speaking English, an indication of human capital positively affects the perception of economic benefits. This can be explained by the fact that gaining citizenship allows refugees to benefit more from their human capital.
Residing in a province with a higher level of unemployment increases perceptions of the economic benefits of citizenship, which can be related to the fact that citizenship allows access to wider job opportunities that are available only to citizens. In contrast, there is a negative relationship between ethnic composition (such as the ratio of Kurds) and perceptions of economic benefits. We can understand this relation by being aware that areas with high levels of Kurdish ethnicity are, in general, agricultural areas where one can find work easily without formal documents. Model 2 shows that having the ethnicity of Syrian Kurds decreases the perception of the political benefits of Turkish citizenship. This can be understood in light of the sensitivity and complications of the relations between the Turkish government and the Turkish Kurds. Having a university diploma, as an indication of a higher level of education, increases perceptions of political benefits.
This may be related to the fact that more highly educated people tend to be interested in public issues and look for a political role. Data suggests that students of the departments of Political Science and Sociology have a higher appreciation of political benefits compared to students in Business Management; this is an expected result. Having Turkish friends increases perceptions of political benefits as a result of being more integrated into the host society. In addition, the high levels of refugees' intensity in the province may push people to become interested in political issues. Model 3 shows a negative relationship between being of Syrian Kurdish ethnicity and perception of the social benefits of Turkish citizenship, which can be understood in the same way as the perception of political benefits. Moreover, being a sociology student and having Turkish friends is the same as for political benefits. With regard to the unemployment rate, this raises the appreciation of the social benefits of citizenship as a way for avoiding the marginalization threats of unemployment. About identity, as we can see in Model 4, there are just two significant factors. For speaking English there is a negative relation with Syrian identity. In contrast, speaking Turkish has a positive effect on Syrian identity, which means that integration may not affect the identity of the origin country negatively. The estimation of attitude models is presented in table 4. Demographic variables have no effect on the attitude towards Turkish citizenship. Model 5 is the estimation of the linear regression of the attitude on perception variables. The model can explain 38% of variations of the attitude, as referred to by the Adjusted Coefficient of Determination (R 2 ).
Economic benefits are the most important, followed by social benefits and then political benefits, which are in line with the hierarchy of human needs. At the same time, there was no role for adherence to Syrian identity. Model 7 shows that some socioeconomic factors, namely ethnic origin, having another diploma and social integration, such as having Turkish friends, have a significant effect on attitude. But the model can explain just 13% of the variance. When controlling the effect of the perception of benefits and costs for demographic, socio-economic, and integration factors, see Model 6. There is a small change in the coefficients; there is also a small change in R 2 , which increased from 0.380 to 0.417. This means that those factors that can affect attitude mostly do that through shaping the perception of individual benefits. Furthermore, the perception of benefits has its role in shaping attitude that is not affected by demographics, socio-economics and integration factors. Only having another diploma keeps its explanatory abilities. This means that education level affects attitude indirectly through perceptions, as well as directly. For the government's propensity toward naturalization, we estimated two binary logistic regression models, as the dependent variables are dummies. Model 8 explores the factors that the government takes into account in selecting Syrian refugees for a call to naturalization. So, the dependent variable is a dummy variable that equals 1 if the person has been called for naturalization, no matter whether they have received it or not yet, and 0 otherwise. The second model, Model 9, tries to specify the factors that the government takes into account when deciding to give citizenship. The dependent variable is equal to 1 if the person has received citizenship and 0 if not. The dependent variables are the same as the attitude regression, in addition, and the attitude variable. Table 5 shows the estimated binary logistic regressions for government choices. From Model 8 we can see that the significant coefficient are those of Political Science students, the province's ethnic composition, the rate of refugees to the province's population, the province's population ratio to Turkey's population, and attitude.
Thus, the government's propensity for calling refugees for naturalization is affected basically by the hosting context, besides the small effect of the university department where the chance of political science students being called is less than for business management students. It seems that the higher the ratio of ethnic Kurds in the province, the higher the level of refugees' ratio to the province's population, and the higher the level of the province's population to Turkey's population leads to a higher probability for a refugee being called to apply for citizenship. This means that the Turkish government decides its calls for naturalization because of the characteristics of the hosting province such as its ethnic composition, the concentration of refugees, and the level of the province's urbanization. There are negative relationships between refugees' attitudes toward citizenship and the probability of being called for naturalization. This may refer to a problem in the central selection approach as it chose people with a low appreciation of citizenship or where there has been some disappointment with the process of naturalization. Model 9 is for the government's propensity to give citizenship. Again, there is an important role for hosting province characteristics, such as the concentration of refugees and urbanization in increasing the probability of giving citizenship, while ethnic composition has no role. In addition, in contrast to Model 8, gender and human skills (having another diploma) shows positive and significant coefficients. This means that men have a higher chance of being given citizenship than women. Besides, there is a higher probability of giving citizenship to people with a higher human skill or who are more educated. The negative association between refugees' attitude towards citizenship and being given it by the government affirms what we previously referred to as a problem in the selection approach, which chooses people with a low appreciation of citizenship. Moreover, we can refer to a probability of some disappointment after being naturalized, when the reality is compared to the expected benefits. As shown above, expected benefits play the most important role in attitude models.

Conclusion and Recommendations
In this study, we have explored the determinants of Syrian refugees' attitude towards naturalization and compared it to the possible determinants of the Turkish government's propensity to naturalization. We used a sample of Syrian students at Mardin Artuklu University, and estimated regression models, linear for attitude and binary logistic for propensity, to clarify the relationship between a dependent (propensity and attitude) and independent (determinants) variables. For refugees' attitudes, there is no role for demographic variables. This may be a result of the sample's characteristics, as being young and students. However, for government propensity, it seems that men have higher chances of being naturalized. Relating to socio-economic factors, being a Syrian Kurd, compared to Arab or Turkmen, affects attitude negatively, indirectly. These may agree partially with what (Yang, 1994) referred to as a negative role for ethnic enclaves in integration and naturalization, as the enclave keeps both the identity and facilities for working and living.
However, in the Syrian Kurds' situation, there is no such real ethnic enclave. So, this may be a result of the complicated relationship between Turkish Kurds and the Turkish government. Speaking English as an indication of higher human skills has a positive effect on attitude, but no effect on the propensity. This affirms Bernard's (1936) indication that people with higher formal education are more likely to become naturalized. At the same time, education raises the probability of being accepted by the government for citizenship. Finally, being a student of Political Science or Sociology decreases attitude but has no effect on propensity. The indications of integration, speaking Turkish, and having Turkish friends, affect directly and indirectly, and increase attitude. This agrees with Bernard (1936) that cultural integration enhances immigrants' sense of belonging to the host community and then the likelihood of being naturalized.
But indications of integration have no effect on propensity, which means that the government is not interested in the degree of integration when giving citizenship. For the hosting context, the unemployment rate has a positive effect on attitude. This is opposite to Yang (1994), who finds that a higher level of unemployment in the hosting context is associated with a low probability of naturalization. He (or she?) explained this by considering that unemployment is an obstacle to integration and then naturalization. We think that in our case seeking naturalization is a way of avoiding unemployment when its rate is high. However, it seems that the unemployment rate is not a concern for the government in its propensity. The ethnic composition of the province (measured by the percent of Kurds to the province's population) negatively affects attitude. It seems that the concentration of refugees in a province increases attitude and the propensity of calling for naturalization and naturalization. This is not unexpected as naturalization is a solution for refugees' problems. The urbanization level (measured by the rate of the province's population to Turkey's population) is not significant for attitude but is an important factor in the propensity for calling for naturalization and giving citizenship. This may be the result of the higher ability of urban areas to provide channels for integrating refugees as referred to by Mossaad, et al. (2018) and Yang (1994).
approach. While identity has no role in determining attitude, this finding denies the symbolic approach. In comparing propensity and attitude determination factors, the shared factors are education, the province's ethnic composition (in the opposite direction), and the concentration of refugees. This means that the government is interested in educating refugees and provinces' contextual factors in naturalization. Furthermore, the government ignores the refugees' desire for naturalization, and indeed opposes it, as we can see from the negative association between propensity and attitude. The added value of this study is its consideration of the top-down approach of the exceptional naturalization of Syrian refugees in Turkey. Indeed, there is a possibility for divergence between the two which was confirmed by the findings of the study. The basic limitation of this study was the limited populations under consideration, and thus the sample has limited characteristics. This restricts the possibility of generalization of the findings, or it should be done carefully. For future study, we suggest considering, after Covid 19, larger and more diversified samples that encompass all groups of Syrian refugees, to enhance the generalizability of findings.