Integrating refugees without conflicts

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