In
April 2011, 252 refugees arrived in Turkey from the Aleppo area. One
year later, there were 23,000 in the country; by 2015, 2 million.
Today there are 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey.
The Turkish government pursued a policy of integrating the newcomers
into urban areas, rather than let them fester in refugee camps. Only
4% still live in camps.
Gaziantep,
a medium-sized industrial city on Turkey’s southern border with
Syria. In one 24-hour period alone, Gaziantep took in 200,000 people.
It eventually took 500,000.
There
is no doubt, whatsoever, that the newcomers put a huge strain on the
city’s resources.
“Initially
we had to provide food, clothing and temporary shelter,” says Onder
Yalcin, head of the city’s migration office. “We rented hotels
and put people up in sports centres. We made a public appeal for help
and people brought food, blankets, clothes, cooking stoves, all sorts
of things. People took the most vulnerable, such as mothers with
young babies, into their homes.”
But
there was also the problem of access to housing, water, public
transport, healthcare and education.
This
pressure on the existing housing stock in Gaziantep, forcing up
rents. Employers, meanwhile, took advantage of the sudden increase in
the workforce to push down wages. There was also resentment that the
aid pouring in was going to Syrians, not to poor Turks.
“If
you go into a neighbourhood in a UN vehicle, everyone knows who is
getting the aid and this causes tension,” says Khalil Omarsha of
the Gaziantep branch of the International Office for Migration
(IOM), the main world body tasked with the resettlement of refugees.
It
was precisely to avoid this sort of conflict that the city adopted a
new approach, based on integration.
The
mayor, Fatma Sahin, established a migration management department.
The idea was that Turks and migrants would receive equal treatment
and benefits. It set
up a plan to build 50,000 new homes, as well as new hospitals and
better public services. All were available to Turks and migrants
alike.
I
said to them, we have to work together,” Yalçin says. “We are
aiming for social cohesion, because Turkish and Syrian people are
going to live together here, and if you only help Syrians there is
going to be tension. “We said: ‘When
you help Syrians in the same neighbourhoods where Turkish people have
the same needs, you have to help them, too.’ They said their funds
were just for migrants and we said: ‘Talk to your donors. And if
you’re not prepared to work with us, then you should leave.’”
The
IOM agreed with the mayor that integration is the best way to avoid
conflict. They jointly run the Ensar community centre in Narlitepe, a
poor neighbourhood where people from both communities are offered
courses in computing, cooking, languages, mosaics and break dancing.
All activities are bilingual, run in Turkish and Arabic.
Having
coped with the initial humanitarian crisis and the early stages of
integration, the next challenge, Yalcin says is education and work.
Initially children were taught the Syrian curriculum in Arabic with
the expectation that they would return home, but as of next year all
ages will be integrated into the Turkish public school system.
Language
remains a barrier to integration and work for their parents. Syrians
can only get a work permit if they are offered a job, but both sides
prefer the informal market: the employers because they don’t pay
social security, and the workers because they don’t forfeit aid
payments. “We’ll
get to the point where covering the basics will not be enough. Now we
need to teach people to fish and not just give them fish,” says
Oben Çoban, Save the Children’s director of programmes in Turkey.
What
sets Gaziantep apart is that it didn’t wait. It was quick to accept
the reality that the migrants were there to stay – and the sooner
integrated, the better.
“Migration
has always been with us,” says Yalcin. “It’s not a problem to
be solved but a reality you have to manage. You should see the
advantages. And you need to tell people the truth: these people are
not stealing your jobs, they’re not stealing your houses.”
Yakzan
Shishakly of the Maran Foundation, an NGO, says Gaziantep is booming.
“The city has really done a good job and there haven’t been any
big problems. When the economy slows down, I fear there will be
conflict.”
The
city remains a role model of tolerance and pragmatism.
IOM’s
Lanna Walsh compares it to the response of other cities: “They say,
OK, we’ll take 80, and they make such a fuss about it. More
European countries need to step up to the plate, like Germany did,
and agree to take more. It’s not a burden to take refugees.
Migration has always been a good thing and a driver for development.”
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/19/gaziantep-turkish-city-successfully-absorbed-half-a-million-migrants-from-syria
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