Syrian children paint their love for Turkey
SYRIAN schoolchildren in Turkey’s southern Hatay province expressed their love for Turkey with paint yesterday.
A school in the Reyhanlı district, which was built by the Turkey-based Humanitarian Solidarity and Cooperation Association (IDKA), asked students to paint their thoughts about Turkey as part of an art activity.
The children drew images of Turkish flags, hearts, flowers and pigeons.
Among them, Ahmad Demir, 11, who came to Turkey from northern Syria’s Aleppo city, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that he is happy to be here. “I have been living here with my family for the past three years. Thanks to Allah, we are happy. Because we love Turkey, we wanted to draw paintings and pictures that show our love.”
Another student, Nur Abdullah from Syria’s northwestern city of Idlib said she and her family are living peacefully in Turkey.
“I worked on my picture for an entire day. I want to be a teacher when I grow up and teach kids here,” she said.
Nearly 20,000 children have taken refuge in Reyhanlı after fleeing Syria due to the ongoing war. They now carry on with their education in Turkey at temporary education centers.
On Tuesday, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said there are 976,000 school-age Syrian children living in Turkey, and 620,000 of them have been able to continue their education.
Turkey hosts more than 3.2 million Syrians, more than any other country in the world.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since 2011, when the Bashar Assad regime cracked down on prodemocracy protests with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict, according to U.N. figures.