Lessons from Experiences of Syrian Civil Society in Refugee Education of Turkey

Abstract

Turkey arranges for the protection of about 1.7 million Syrian refugee children on its territory. This article addresses initiatives and policies towards Syrian children in Turkey, considering characteristics and paradigm shift of refugee education in which hosting large refugee populations. It focuses on experiences of refugee community organizations (RCOs) working on the matter of education. Drawing on an exploratory case study with purposively selected Syrian RCOs in Istanbul, it particularly investigates to explore activities of “Temporary Education Centers” emerging in the emergency-based perspective in early times of Syrian refugee migration and radically disappearing in the integration-based interventions of the State. We will discuss handicaps of making schools refugee places linking with the socio-political conditions of post-displacement and possibilities of cultural orientation of the refugee agency.

Keywords:

• Syrian refugees
• integration
• refugee community organizations
• non-governmental organizations
• civil society
• cultural orientation
• place making

Notes

1 In order to be more concrete about what Turkey allowed about Syrians’ education, see the legal framework Circular on Educational Activities Targeting Foreigners in 2014, http://mevzuat.meb.gov.tr/dosyalar/1715.pdf. [Turkish].

2 In fact, Turkey has combatted the problem of child labor long, not finished up but got result. Still, the number of working children in Turkey is drastically increased after the arrival of Syrian refugees. There are some policies conducted by the EU and the UN to fight child labor. The most common one is the conditional cash transfer for education (CCTE), which is implemented by Turkish Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Security (MoFLLS), Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE), Kızılay and UNICEF. This programme to tackle the issue of child labor was extended to the school-aged children under temporary and international protection in 2017. We are in need of quantitative analysis to see the impact of this kind of measures, but it certainly alleviated negative affects of the Syrain children’s transfer policy from TECs to Turkish schools. By evaluating the impact qualitatively, UNICEF, (2018) declared that the extension of the CCTE increased school attendance of Syrian and other refugee children.

3 Turkey is the signatory to the Convention’s associated Protocol in 1967 but has a geographical limitation. It means that Turkey does not grant refugee status to people fleeing from conflicts and persecution in non-European countries, but conditional protection status for the asylum seekers, for example temporary protection for the people coming with a mass influx.This status was introduced in 2014 with a law called Law on Foreigners and International Protection (http://www.goc.gov.tr/files/files/YUKK_I%CC%87NGI%CC%87LI%CC%87ZCE_BASKI(1)(1).pdf. [Official English Translation]) and more clarified with the Temporary Protection Regulation (http://www.goc.gov.tr/files/files/temptemp.pdf [Official English Translation]).