Young Syrian refugees settling in for long stay
SURUC, Turkey — Ahmet Basa, a quiet, wide-eyed 11-year-old refugee from Damascus, Syria, speaks Turkish fluently and has big plans for the future. “I want to be a doctor,” he said, sitting with a teacher after school in the province of Sanliurfa in Turkey’s southeast.
Two years ago, Ahmet crossed over from Syria by car with his six siblings and his parents. Three of his uncles came later. The family was relatively fortunate: They already had relatives in Turkey and Ahmet had begun learning Turkish on previous trips.
“They told me we’d stay six months, and that when the war ended we’d go back. It has been two years,” he said.
Ahmet attends a public school that is walking distance from his new home. His father works at a pastry shop, and his mother stays at home, because she speaks only Arabic. Ahmet’s sister attends a religious vocational school.
Turkey is host to 1.5 million Syrian refugees, but the number is expected to rise to 1.7 million in 2015, according to the U.N. agency for refugees.
“Turkey at the begin- ning of the crisis in 2011 didn’t want much international assistance, it was confident it could handle it, but then the numbers grew,” said Metin Corabatir, the director of the Research Center on Asylum and Migration, a think tank based in Ankara, Turkey.
In a statement last month, Numan Kurtulmus, a deputy prime minister, said Turkey had misjudged the extent of the Syrian crisis. “Unfortunately, we thought the Syrian refugees were here temporarily, that they would arrive and leave in a few months,” the statement said. “But after 3½ years of this civil war, it looks like they will remain here.”
Corabatir agreed. “Nobody expected it would last this long,” he said. “The reality now is that the Turks have to learn how to live” side by side with the refugees, he added.
Ahmet has reunited with several of his old friends in these new neighborhoods. Since they do not speak Turkish as well as he does, he teaches them new words he learns at school.
His teacher, Halil Balikcioglu, has been teaching music for 35 years. In his classes at the Sanliurfa Cultural and Artistic Education and Research Foundation he teaches traditional Turkish tunes. Ahmet joined a year ago.
“Because of the conflict, the children are behind in their education, they miss out on their childhood,” he said.