ISTANBUL: A vast majority of the huge Syrian community living for years in Turkey have no plans to return home, despite challenging living conditions and a prevailing anti-refugee sentiment in Turkey, a wide-ranging research has shown.
Over 4 million refugees in Turkey, 3.6 million from Syria, make the country home to the world’s largest refugee population since the start of the civil war in neighboring Syria, in 2011.
“The 2019 Syrians barometer,” a comprehensive survey conducted amongst locals and Syrians, and supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Turkey’s office, was published on Wednesday.
Murat Erdogan, a migration expert and scholar at Istanbul’s Turkish-German University who headed the study, said that it confirmed that “the great bulk of Syrians have no plans to return home” and that the Turkish government has to confront this dilemma.
“In 2017, 16.7 percent of Syrian respondents of the previous research said that they were not considering returning home whatsoever. In 2019, this has risen to 51.8 percent, a very significant increase,” he explained during a television program.
He indicated that another 30 percent of Syrian respondents said that even if the war ends in Syria, they would only consider returning on the condition that a government that will support them is formed.
“This means that they also are not planning to return to their native country. We can thus clearly conclude that a vast majority of Syrians are here to stay, even if the civil war ends in their country,” Erdogan noted.
On the other hand, Turkish respondents of the survey massively said that they are still not ready to live or mingle with the Syrian community, nearly a decade after their arrival from the civil-war torn nation.
“Some 85 percent of Turks want Syrians to be isolated in cities and neighborhoods of their own, and 75 percent say they don’t want to live with them within the same community,” Erdogan remarked, highlighting the resentment towards refugees in general in Turkey.
Disdain towards Syrians is largely due to economic and cultural reasons, and there is strong domestic political pressure on the Ankara government to resettle them in their homeland using any possible means.
Some 400,000 Syrians have been voluntarily sent back in areas in northern Syria controlled by the Turkish army since the start of the year, following a string of incursions there for security reasons, according to official figures.
However, this is far from being enough, and the survey has once again demonstrated that a real integration effort is required from the Turkish government’s part to address this complex issue, Metin Corabatir, a prominent Turkish expert on refugees, told Xinhua.
Corabatir, who is the head of the Research Center on Asylum and Migration (Igamder), explained that Syrians are in Turkey under temporary protection status and not as refugees, preventing them to benefit from basic rights in their host nation.
“For nine years now, Turkey has done a lot for the Syrians as regards to education and other needs, but very little concerning social integration of these people who will stay in Turkey for an unforeseeable period of time,” he indicated.
The expert urged Turkish authorities to make plans so as that the Syrian community, left in limbo, be allowed to share the same rights as Turks, such as access to employment and legal courts, except for political rights.
“All surveys conducted in Turkey point to this fact. Turkey has to do more efforts to integrate Syrians to the Turkish society despite many challenges and despite the hot debate about this contentious concept,” he added.
Corabatir also said that the COVID-19 outbreak in Turkey has magnified and worsened pre-existing vulnerabilities among Syrians, such as lost income, lack of proper nutrition, and higher living expenses.
According to the research, nearly 70 percent of Syrians are employed illegally.
Turkey is providing free COVID-19 treatment to all of its citizens and refugees alike. However, there has been no official health data on Syrians or other refugee communities such as Iraqis, Iranians, and Afghans.
Mohammad, a Syrian from Homs in northern Syria, who has been living and working at odd jobs in the capital Ankara for over five years, said that “his heart is in Syria,” but he has made Turkey his home with his family of five.
Requesting to remain anonymous, Mohammad told Xinhua that even if the war ends today in Syria, it will still take many years to rebuild the country to make it liveable.
“My children are going to Turkish schools and we are happy to be here despite difficulties, our hearts are there (Syria), but we don’t plan to go back yet,” he added.
