ABSTRACT
After the 2011 Syrian revolution, thousands of Syrian businesspeople moved out of Syria to Turkey, and their investments in Turkey started to show in 2014. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the way in which Syrian business migrants interact with each other regarding their political and economic activities in Turkey by asking what the rationales are for participating in or staying away from political affairs, which factors influence these businesspeople to work together as business partners or to remain as individual businesses, and what tangible consequences, advantages or drawbacks, there might be for Turkey-based Syrian businesspeople of variations in such political and economic practices. The chapter argues that even though some Syrian businesspeople have changed their ways and their mind-sets about networking with their fellow countrymen, the most significant factor that affects the networking of Syrian businesspeople is the regime’s pre-revolution and current rule and how it is able to affect Syrian businessmen outside the country.
