Peering through a lens of disasters and inequalities, this article measures the financial impacts of Covid‐19 on citizens and refugee communities in Turkey during a relatively early phase of the global pandemic. Our data comes from an online survey (N = 1749) conducted simultaneously with Turkish citizens and Syrian refugees living in Turkey, followed by in‐depth online interviews with Syrian refugees. Our findings indicate that the initial Covid‐19 measures had a higher financial impact on Syrians than on citizens when controlled for employment, wealth, and education, among other variables. In line with the literature, our research confirms that disasters’ socio‐economic effects disproportionally burden minority communities. We additionally discuss how Covid‐19 measures have significantly accelerated effects on refugees compared to the local population, mainly due to the structural and policy context within which forcibly displaced Syrians have been received in Turkey.

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