Making Sense of Natural Disasters and Coping: A Study on Covid-19 Outbreak in Turkey

As in the whole world, the Covid-19 outbreak has affected the lives of peopel from age seven to seventy in Turkey and is still affecting in various dimensions. In the context of Turkey, it has been observed that three issues are clearly on the public agenda during the pandemi; (1) perception and meaning of the Covid-19 outbreak, (2) measures to control the outbreak and attitudes towards these measures, (3) ways of coping with the risk of infection and pandemiz related restrictions. This descriptive study deals with these three issues in the context of religion and religiosity. The aim of the study is to examine how Turkish people perceive and make sense of Coronavirus outbreak and related developments and what coping strategies they prefer. We developed an online survey tool using Google Forms in line with the subject and purpose of the research. The survey form consists of 47 questions and 7 different sections. The survey items were mostly composed of Likert types and participants were asked to score each statement between 1 (Strongly Disagree) and 5 (Strongly Agree). The data was collected online from 8th to the 18th of April 2020. The collected data was then transferred to the SPSS package program in a computer environment and subjected to various analyses. Our findings show that the Covid-19 pandemic was taken seriously by most of the participant. A third (30%) of the respondents approve conspiracy theories that political or economic global manipulation is behind the Coronavirus outbreak, while nearly the same percentage (29%) believe that the outbreak is a manifestation of divine judgement. In the context of this question, just over a fifth (22%) of the respondents stated that Coronavirus does not have any special meaning other than that it is a natural epidemic. Finally, only 9% of the respondents clearly believe that the outbreak is a form of divine punishment. Regarding the ways of coping, almost all of the respondents (98.6%) follow coronavirus measures such as "stay at home," "hygiene," and "social distancing". The majority of the participants (86%) resort to prayer, worship and chanting to cope with fear, anxiety and stress caused by the Coronavirus, while a third (28.2%) of the participants cope by trying to be positive. Nearly all of the participants (88.2%) stated that people need “spiritual support” during difficult times and pandemics such as the Coronavirus.

Keywords

Psychology of Religion, Covid-19, Natural Disasters, Religious Coping, Divine Punishment, Divine Justice, Conspiracy Theories.