47.2% of foreign students in north Cyprus experienced racist harassment - Research

According to a research carried out in north Cyprus, 47.2 percent of foreign students studying in the country were subjected to "racist harassment".

The research was carried out by the Political Research Center (Polmer) affiliated with Rauf Denktaş University which continues its four-part research on the city-university relationship from a sociological perspective.

The 'Racism' research survey, which is the third part of the ongoing studies under the direction of sociologist Kudret Akay, was completed recently.

According to the survey in which a total of 305 foreign students, excluding Turkish students registered at the school, participated in October-December 2023, 47.2 percent of the students were subjected to racist harassment.

According to the survey data, 23.7 percent of the participants were harassed by color-based descriptions or jokes, while 20.4 percent were verbally harassed. Again, 16.8 percent of the participants stated that they were exposed to discriminatory comments, while 11.8 percent stated that they were exposed to physical violence.

While a majority of 79.9 percent of the respondents said that they did not go to the police about the harassment they suffered, the complaints of 21.1 percent of the people who complained resulted in the police not applying any punitive procedures. Accordingly, 34.5 percent of those who made complaints stated that they could not get any results, while the number of cases in which the police resorted to a criminal procedure remained at 6.9 percent. 

Again, 10.3 percent of the participants said that their complaints have not been evaluated yet. While 13.8 percent of the complaints were not progressed due to lack of evidence, the rate of those who withdrew their complaints was 20.7 percent.

While 22.6 percent of the majority who did not file a complaint said they did not file a complaint because they did not know how to do so, 20.9 percent said they did not do so because they thought the complaint would not be taken seriously. 

Again, 10.9 percent said they did not complain because they thought they would not be believed, while 4.3 percent said they did not complain because they were ashamed.

While 31.9 percent of the survey participants said that the harassment incident they experienced made them very sad, 26.4 percent of them expressed anger at the incident. While 13.2 percent experienced depression after harassment, 9 percent said they became very fragile.

While 59 percent of those surveyed said they had been harassed by others, 31.1 percent said they were very worried about being subjected to racist harassment. While 10.2 percent were not worried about this issue at all, 16.1 percent said they were neither worried nor unconcerned.

While 30.8 percent of the respondents said that racism was a very big problem in Northern Cyprus, only 4.6 percent said that it was not a big problem at all. 

While 75.7 percent of the survey participants stated that they understood Turkish very little, the rate of friends who spoke Turkish was reflected in the results as only 37.4.

Only 15 percent of those surveyed found the people of Northern Cyprus very hospitable, while 19.7 percent said they did not find them hospitable at all.

The research was conducted by taking the 2020 United Nations 'Racism Survey' as a reference and adapting it to country conditions with the same question modeling. The research also took the word 'race', defined as the basis of the law adopted by England in 2010, as a basis, and a wide definition scale was used not only on color but also on ethnicity, country and nationality.