© Diego Cupolo, © European Union, 2024
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The scale of the earthquake in Turkey is often described in terms of the number of victims and injured and destroyed buildings, and less often in terms of the number of people whose lives have been turned upside down, who have lost their communities, who have been left with no job prospects or access to education.
Syrian refugees, already vulnerable before the quake, are at even greater risk. A year later, they fell prey to the fears of millions of affected Turks that the state would care more for them than for its citizens. Even if unfounded, these fears have prompted authorities in some provinces to keep them out of the public eye. Or at least prefer to be there.
How to continue or start over? Dnevnik saw several of the attempts as part of a tour of southern Turkey organized by the European Commission’s humanitarian aid office (ECHO) in late January and early February.
The EU’s role as a significant donor remains important even as aid to Turkey shifts from humanitarian to development aid. Humanitarian funds between 2020 and 2023 amount to 1.02 billion euros; for 2024, only 26 million are planned for aid. This week, Ankara and the European Commission also signed an agreement to allocate 400 million euros from the Solidarity Fund to finance reconstruction operations.
Turkey shows why refugees are not just a “problem of Christian Europe”
The results of the door-to-door work of the organizations with which the EU partners give some reason for hope. However, the high percentage of unemployed and out-of-school children shows that the efforts are far from over.
The earthquake worsened the situation
The economic hardships facing Syrians are felt far before February 6, 2023. Authoritative researcher Murat Erdoğan’s 2022 Syria Barometer survey indicated that the share of people with regular work income is declining; 33.6% of those who declared that they work, in 2019, and 60.5% – in 2021, work “piecemeal”, day by day. Conversely, 50.2% were permanently employed in 2019 and 25% in 2021.
For several years now, inflation has put anyone willing to help Turkey to another test. The EU and (individually) Member States also fund the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) project through special debit cards that provide monthly assistance to those living outside formal camps (mainly Syrians) to meet their needs. The project with a budget of more than 2 billion euros precedes the earthquake and tries to adjust to inflation: 120 pounds per person in 2019, 155 – in 2021, 300 – in 2023, although it is difficult to adjust to the rate per pound – 6 pounds per euro at the beginning of 2019, 33 pounds at the moment. There is a separate program of financial support together with UNICEF for families who go to school.
In a center in southern Turkey, the new life of the earthquake victims is coming step by step
The earthquake only sharply deepened the crisis. It cut Syrians off from the communities where they found jobs. The Turkish authorities’ plans to transfer the inhabitants of the “informal” camps to “formal” ones deepen the trend. The Akpanar camp in Adyaman, closed in 2019 (when most Syrians were in the cities), was reopened. Transportation to and from it takes time.
In “Akpanar” schools with a capacity of 800-900 people and a kindergarten are opening next month. They will mess up the plans of many families whose children are already integrating into the education system. According to the Gökkuşağı Derneği (“Rainbow Association”) organization, 413 out of 804 schools in Adyaman province have been damaged so far, a year later. A total of 55 are completely unusable.
High school is missing. High school students with interrupted studies and future workers cannot be offered a job by the camp. However, thanks to Gökkuşa and their international partner, the German GIZ Foundation, they can lend a hand.
“I want a drawing course”
A small room is full of activity: a dozen girls and young women are learning to do hair and paint.
A total of 24 students – refugees from the camp – are attending the hairdressing courses, part of a Gökkuşa project funded by ECHO. Some come five times a week. They are divided into two groups: morning and afternoon, each lasting four hours. The teacher comes from a qualification centre.
Gökkuşağı, the partner of the German NGO GIZ, offers Turkish and vocational training courses, legal and gender-based violence counseling, psychosocial counseling.
© Diego Cupolo, © European Union, 2024
Hairdressing course at the Akpanar camp
Passing the course, totaling more than 250 hours, gives them a certificate with which they can open their own salon, work for other hairdressers or – if they do not have such an opportunity – at least receive clients at home.
“I come to the course, I love my teacher, we have a great time, we look for a lot of things,” says 18-year-old Lemiz.
After the course we were very stressed. They have everything we need in these courses, we enjoy them.
Lemiz,
a refugee from Syria
“Most want to open their own salon and they already do other people’s hair. The course gives you confidence,” says a representative of the qualification program responsible for the courses.
It’s too early to tell if the program is working. It starts only in autumn. While female students live in the camp and are isolated from urban communities, job opportunities for them will be fewer.
However, the participants already know what other courses they would like. “The sewing course is the most important,” say several of the girls. Still, after them, one calls: “Painting.”
© Diego Cupolo, © European Union, 2024
Hairdressing course at the Akpanar camp
When rents jump dozens of times
Such courses are not suitable for everyone. Reja as Said came from Idlib in 2014; her husband remains in a Syrian prison. “The earthquake started in the morning. We were sleeping and it took us by surprise. We were on the street for three days, then – at a university, in a car, we tried to set up a small tent,” he says. “One of our neighbors has a car, I put the kids there.” Her son, who is about to come of age, is about to lose his job.
After three or four months with an uncle in a camp in a small town in Adhyaman province – once a government compound – she returned to Adhyaman. “The refugees were moved elsewhere, away from the city center. I came back, I was looking for a house.”
She used to work in Turkey as a tailor, but the long hours in which she is wrapped up bring back pain to Reja as well. “I got my son to help me. He started at 15. He’s working today, and we have an ESSN. We get him every month.”
© Diego Cupolo, © European Union, 2024
Reja’s husband has been in a Syrian prison for ten years. It is difficult for her today in Turkey as well. “After the earthquake, there is less work. My son is working now, but not as usual.”
And Reja receives a call from the UN to confirm that the application for asylum in a European country has been received; she is waiting for her date.
Syrians have returned to the level of basic needs after their situation had improved before the earthquake. Now they need almost everything.
Ali Fuat Sutlu,
Concern Worldwide
Unlike most interlocutors among the Syrian refugees, Reja has an accurate idea of his expenses. Her son takes 11,500 Turkish liras (currently 347 euros); she takes 1,800 (€60) in Red Crescent benefits. The rent is about 4500 lira, 300 – electricity, another 300 – other services. “The rest we try to spend only on the essentials.” In other words, the family has about 250 euros a month when they pay rent and bills.
Before the earthquake, the average family rent was 600 euros, says Reja.
Prices are going up, one of my problems is that I can’t buy for my kids as usual. After the earthquake, I could not get coal from the government for heating. Sometimes I am forced to borrow from relatives and friends.
Reja,
a refugee from Syria
“I want to work and I hope so. But the pain in my back is preventing me.”
Reja is looking for another solution. At 39, she’s still ready to retrain. She wants to attend courses, such as hairdressing, but finds it difficult to do so five days a week, all morning or all afternoon, as she is needed by her children and other relatives at home.
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Those organized by Gökkuşağı Derneği in the container camp “Akpanar” last half a day. Reja, however, lives in Adyaman, tens of kilometers from the camp; such a long trip will be difficult without own car, without own finances.
Access to school is sometimes a challenge
Many Syrians, like Reja, do not want to stay in the camps. However, for some of their families, the opportunities for children to continue their education are even more limited than in “Akpanar”.
Representatives of UNICEF and their partner, the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM), also told about this at a meeting with the European media. According to their data, among 1.8 million children of nearly 4 million refugees and migrants:
- 1,448,638 are of school age;
- 972,792 go to school;
- over 475 thousand (over a third of all children) do not go, with child labor and child marriage, together with isolation and discrimination, being leading factors;
- many of them have dropped out of school or cannot do without support.
These are the data for all of Turkey. After the earthquake, a total of 350,000 children of refugees and migrants have difficulty accessing education. Cases of child labor and the other listed problems have become more frequent since the earthquake, which left many adults without work. However, the problem precedes the earthquake.
ASAM talks about 60,000 documented cases of child labor – many of them scavenging debris after the earthquake.
Teams of the organizations are knocking door to door, offering initial assistance such as translation and transport, with teaching aids and coordination with local and national authorities.
When Ali arrived in Nurdaa from Kilis in 2013, he hardly expected that his eldest son would be working at the age of 11. in Syria, Ali works seasonally in construction and agriculture. In Turkey, he worked on a farm for a year and rented a house. It goes into construction. develops pain in the back and stomach, then – a hernia; he cannot exercise labor as before. His son Juma, even before the earthquake, started working in a confectionery; stops going to school.
© Diego Cupolo, © European Union, 2024
Juma is 12 today. At 11, shortly before the earthquake, he worked in a sweet shop as no one else at home had any income.
ASAM and UNICEF, for which school support is one of the EU-funded programmes, contacted Ali. They explain to him that it is illegal for Juma to work, help his daughter Hanan, who has hearing problems and is bullied by her classmates, to return to school. They also help the woman with school supplies.
These problems predate the earthquake. After him, not only Juma and Hanan, but also the other two school-age children in the family are left without the opportunity to attend school after the house they live in for rent in Nurda’ is badly damaged in the earthquake, and they leave it.
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On the day of the meeting with the European media, all the children are at the table because it is a mid-term vacation. Ali and his family are in the courtyard of the same house whose first floor they rented years ago: ASAM found a working school not far away that the children could attend.
“I was upset that they weren’t going to school … then so excited,” Ali says. “But honestly, they encouraged me. They kept calling and contacting. They gave us support, I was in a situation where I couldn’t even buy pens. They helped with the materials.”
We always hope that next year will be better. I want to see my kids graduate. It’s almost too late for me, my only hope is my children.
But,
a refugee from Syria
The language barrier is a problem for some of the Syrian children, but not in this predominantly Turkish neighborhood of Nurdaa. So are mostly their classmates and friends. “We go to school, we wait for the teacher, he comes, we open our books, we start writing,” says 12-year-old Juma. “We study, we rest, we go back to our lessons. We study again. We go home and study again.”
© Diego Cupolo, © European Union, 2024
Ali’s family in Nurdaa
Juma hears the question of what his day looks like in Arabic, but answers in Turkish. A little while ago, when asked what he liked most about school, he also answered: “Turkish.” The other children around the table smile. Some of them say, “Everything.”
After a year in the adult world, does Juma know what she wants to do when she grows up? “Doctor,” he answers quickly. Two more want to be doctors, one of the girls – a teacher.
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