Despite talk of returns, Turkey quietly works to integrate Syrian refugees

Ahmed Sahlabji repairs a broken fuse in a private school where he works as a janitor in Gaziantep, Turkey, March 6, 2019. Picture taken March 6, 2019. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Updated 29 March 2019
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Despite talk of returns, Turkey quietly works to integrate Syrian refugees

  • Almost half of Turkey’s 22 government-run camps for Syrians have closed, and although some residents have returned to Syria, most have stayed
  • Despite political rhetoric to the contrary, and with the support of international donors, Turkey is quietly paving the way to integrate many of its nearly 4 million Syrians

GAZIANTEP, Turkey: When his rebel fighter son was killed and life in Syria became impossible for Jamal Sahlabji, he and his remaining family packed up and joined hundreds of thousands fleeing to neighboring countries.
Sahlabji settled in Gaziantep, a Turkish town close to the Syrian border that became a haven for opposition figures, rebels and refugees escaping fighting and bombardment.
Refugee camps were set up but Sahlabji, who arrived in 2012, steered clear of the tents. Now almost half of Turkey’s 22 government-run camps for Syrians have closed, and although some residents have returned to Syria, most have stayed and moved to permanent housing across the country.
Despite political rhetoric to the contrary, and with the support of international donors, Turkey is quietly paving the way to integrate many of its nearly 4 million Syrians — by far the biggest group of refugees who have spilled over Syria’s borders during the eight-year-old civil war.
Absorbing even a portion of such numbers into its society and workforce however poses a significant challenge, especially as the economy stutters and unemployment rises.
Sahlabji now works as a doorman in a private high school, where his son Ahmed is a janitor. His daughter is studying for university where she hopes to take architecture, while another son and his family has been granted Turkish citizenship.
Seven years after they fled the Syrian city of Aleppo, the Sahlabjis are not planning to return home, as originally envisioned, but are instead putting down new roots.
“We’re hopeful we can create a future for our children,” Ahmed said. “We’ve put them in schools and we’re spending on them so that maybe they study and go to university and make something of themselves, God willing.”
“Here, the government works for the people,” the 31-year-old added. “Back home, it’s the opposite.”
Most Syrians in Turkey are still registered as refugees. A few are unregistered, and a small proportion — at least 55,000 — have been granted Turkish citizenship.
But behind the numbers, a broader shift is taking place in the support provided to Syrians, most of whom arrived with the few possessions they could carry across the border in an influx that European leaders feared would fuel a migration crisis.
The European Union, which has given billions of euros to help Turkey host refugees in return for stopping them crossing into Greece, is now concentrating support on longer-term projects such as preparing Syrians to compete in the job market and funding language courses and vocational training.
“There is now a slight shift from providing basic humanitarian assistance to more long-term assistance which also leads to better socio-economic integration of refugees, of people who want to stay in Turkey,” EU Ambassador Christian Berger told Reuters.
Some refugees are being gradually taken off a smart-card system, an emergency measure to deliver cash for rent or groceries, and recent projects focus more on helping Syrians mix into Turkish society.
“The idea is to drastically reduce the number who depend on humanitarian assistance,” Berger said. “This cannot go on forever.”

’We’re not going back’
There is public resentment over the influx in some quarters. The government, and President Tayyip Erdogan’s, stance in the run-up to municipal elections this weekend has been to play up the prospects of the Syrians’ imminent return to their homeland.
However a senior Turkish government official told Reuters that, while Ankara would like to see the refugees return to Syria once stability was restored, it realistically accepted that some would want to stay in Turkey.
“There will be people who have established businesses, got married. We will not force them to return,” the official said. “The current efforts are conducted on the assumption that they will live here comfortably and for an extended period of time.”
Because most Syrians initially thought they would eventually return home, they at first placed their Arabic-speaking children in temporary education centers and afternoon schools, where classes were held mostly held in Arabic.
In 2016 the ministry of education and European Union started to phase out those temporary education centers, moving Syrian children into Turkey’s mainstream schools and offering intensive Turkish classes for non-speakers to help them settle in.
Supported by EU funds, Turkey is building hospitals in Hatay and Kilis, two southern provinces on the border with Syria, as well as 55 schools and community and training centers.
In its second 3-billion-euro package for Turkey, agreed last year, the European Union has allocated 500 million euros toward education projects and school infrastructure for the refugees.
Alongside those schemes, the Ankara government has made it easier for Syrians to get work permits — helping bring them into the formal labor market in Turkey, home to 82 million people.
In 2017 Turkey reduced the fees for work permits by two thirds, although by November last year, only 32,000 out of 3.6 million registered Syrian refugees had acquired permits, with many more working illegally.
“When you are giving access to the labor market, when you are trying to close temporary education centers and integrate Syrians into Turkish schools, when you are doing migrant health centers — this is integration,” said an aid worker in Turkey, who asked not be identified.
In a blue and yellow-painted secondary school in Ankara, refugee children are introduced to Turkish idiom through pictures: a torso with a chunk of meat instead of a head is “et kafali,” a Turkish expression that translates to “meat head” but means stupid.
Syrian students take turns reading out loud a book passage about touring Istanbul.
One schoolboy said learning Turkish was important to him because his family did not plan to return. He paused a second, eyes glancing down and then darting around in doubt, before repeating himself: “We’re not going back to Syria.”

Election talk, bitter exile
Ahead of the elections on Sunday, Erdogan has stressed he is creating conditions in Syria for people to go back. “We aim to create safe zones in which the nearly 4 million Syrian refugees still living in our country can return to their own homes,” he said in January.
Former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, campaigning to be mayor of Istanbul for Erdogan’s AK Party, said this week that Syrians could disrupt peace in the city.
“If they negatively impact normal life and order here, there will be repercussions. We cannot tolerate this and we will send them back,” he said.
Similar language emerged in presidential election rallies last year, and the government regularly declares that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have already returned to parts of north Syria where Turkey has carried out two military operations.
The interior minister said last month that nearly 312,000 had returned. The United Nations has not been able to corroborate that figure.
“Turkey’s view toward Syrians depends on the political environment,” the aid worker said. “But operationally speaking, Turkey has been doing a fantastic job in integration for the last eight years.”
Nevertheless, Turkey’s stumbling economy and rising unemployment has fueled some resentment against Syrians.
Last month an altercation between Syrians and Turks in Istanbul’s Esenyurt, a major refugee district, left four people injured, the state-owned Anadolu Agency reported.
Turks rushed to the street afterwards, vandalising Syrian stores and chanting: “This is Turkey.”
Clashes like that remain an exception for now, and Sahlabji says he can’t see how he can return to a country still in turmoil and where he worries about being arrested because of his son’s days fighting with the rebels.
He says no one in Turkey bothers his family, and he dismisses Erdogan’s claims that all Syrians will leave.
“That’s election talk,” he smiled. “When elections are over, it’s over.”
But he choked up when talking about living in exile.
“Truthfully, it’s not that it’s hard — it’s bitter.” 


Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue investments after US bribery allegations

Updated 11 min 30 sec ago
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Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue investments after US bribery allegations

  • Adani Group holds a 70 percent stake in Haifa port in northern Israel and is involved in multiple other projects with firms in the country
  • US last week accused Adani Group of being part of scheme to pay bribes of $265 million to secure contracts, misleading US investors 

HYDERABAD, India: Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue to invest in the country, Israel’s envoy to India said on Thursday, affirming the nation’s support for the ports-to-media conglomerate whose billionaire founder is facing bribery allegations in the United States.

“We wish Adani and all Indian companies continue to invest in Israel,” Ambassador Reuven Azar said in an interview with Reuters, adding that allegations by US authorities were “not something that’s problematic” from Israel’s point of view.

The Adani Group holds a 70% stake in Haifa port in northern Israel and is involved in multiple other projects with firms in the country, including to produce military drones and plans for the manufacture of commercial semiconductors.

US authorities last week accused Gautam Adani, his nephew, and Adani Green’s managing director of being part of a scheme to pay bribes of $265 million to secure Indian power supply contracts and misleading US investors during fund raising efforts there.

Adani Group has denied all the accusations, calling them “baseless.”

Still, shares and bonds of Adani companies were hammered last week and some partners began to review joint projects.

“I am sure Adani Group will resolve its problems,” Azar said on the sidelines of an event in the southern city of Hyderabad.


Lebanon to hold parliament session on Jan. 9 to elect president

Updated 18 min 6 sec ago
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Lebanon to hold parliament session on Jan. 9 to elect president

  • State news agency: ‘Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9’

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s parliament will hold a session in January to elect a new president, official media reported on Thursday, a day after an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire began and following more than two years of presidential vacuum.
“Speaker Nabih Berri called a parliament session to elect a president of the republic on January 9,” the official National News Agency reported.


Israeli tank fires at 3 south Lebanese towns

Updated 48 min 58 sec ago
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Israeli tank fires at 3 south Lebanese towns

  • Lebanese security sources and state media report tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba

BEIRUT: Israeli tank fire hit three towns along Lebanon’s southeast border with Israel on Thursday, Lebanese security sources and state media said, a day after a ceasefire barring “offensive military operations” came into force.

Tank fire struck Markaba, Wazzani and Kfarchouba, all of which lie within two kilometers of the Blue Line demarcating the border between Lebanon and Israel. One of the security sources said two people were wounded in Markaba.

A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah took effect on Wednesday under a deal brokered by the US and France, intended to allow people in both countries to start returning to homes in border areas shattered by 14 months of fighting.

But managing the returns have been complicated. Israeli troops remain stationed within Lebanese territory in towns along the border, and on Thursday morning the Israeli military urged residents of towns along the border strip not to return yet for their own safety.

The three towns hit on Thursday morning lie within that strip.

There was no immediate comment on the tank rounds from Hezbollah or Israel, who had been fighting for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war.

The agreement, a rare diplomatic feat in a region racked by conflict, ended the deadliest confrontation between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group in years. But Israel is still fighting its other arch foe, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip.

Under the ceasefire terms, Israeli forces can take up to 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military not to allow residents back to villages near the border.

Lebanon’s speaker of parliament Nabih Berri, the top interlocutor for Lebanon in negotiating the deal, had said on Wednesday that residents could return home.


Syria war monitor says more than 130 dead in army-militant clashes in north

Updated 28 November 2024
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Syria war monitor says more than 130 dead in army-militant clashes in north

  • Clashes followed “an operation launched by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
  • The air forces of both Syria and its ally Russia struck the attacking militants

BEIRUT: A monitor of Syria’s war said on Thursday that more than 130 combatants had been killed in clashes between the army and militant groups in the country’s north, as the government also reported fierce fighting.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll in the clashes which began a day earlier after the militants launched an attack “has risen to 132, including 65 fighters” from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, 18 from allied factions “and 49 members of the regime forces.”


Palestinian leader Abbas lays ground for succession

Updated 28 November 2024
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Palestinian leader Abbas lays ground for succession

  • Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday announced who would replace him in an interim period when the post becomes vacant, effectively removing the Islamist movement Hamas from any involvement in a future transition.
Abbas, 89, still rules despite his term as head of the Palestinian Authority ending in 2009, and has resisted pressure to appoint a successor or a vice president.
Under current Palestinian law, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) takes over the Palestinian Authority in the event of a power vacuum.
But the PLC, where Hamas had a majority, no longer exists since Abbas officially dissolved it in 2018 after more than a decade of tensions between his secular party, Fatah, and Hamas, which ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in the Gaza Strip in 2007.
In a decree, Abbas said the Palestinian National Council chairman, Rawhi Fattuh, would be his temporary replacement should the position should become vacant.
“If the position of the president of the national authority becomes vacant in the absence of the legislative council, the Palestinian National Council president shall assume the duties... temporarily,” it said.
The decree added that following the transition period, elections must be held within 90 days. This deadline can be extended in the event of a “force majeure,” it said.
The PNC is the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which has over 700 members from the Palestinian territories and abroad.
Hamas, which does not belong to the PLO, has no representation on the council. The PNC deputies are not elected, but appointed.
The decree refers to the “delicate stage in the history of the homeland and the Palestinian cause” as war rages in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, after the latter’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel in October last year.
There are also persistent divisions between Hamas and Fatah.
The decree comes on the same day that a ceasefire entered into force in Lebanon after an agreement between Israel and Hamas’s ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The Palestinian Authority appears weaker than ever, unable to pay its civil servants and threatened by Israeli far-right ministers’ calls to annex all or part of the occupied West Bank, an ambition increasingly less hidden by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.