Refugee crisis: Syrian's life in the urban slums of Turkey

The one storey building, a disused shop was never meant to have people living here, let alone a large family crowded into one room.
Within the confines of a few yards, two adults and three children, sleep, wash, cook and make use of a makeshift latrine in this their sanctuary from the bullets, barrel bombs, and air strikes in the Syrian city of Aleppo from which they fled two years ago.
Welcome to Mauvlana, a run down neighbourhood in the Turkish port city of Izmir, already home to many impoverished Turks and now an increasing number of Syrian refugees.
From the political graffiti that emblazons the walls, to the Arabic spoken on the streets, you feel that the war in Syria is never far away in this shoddy district in an otherwise up-market coastal tourist haven with its expensive fish restaurants, smart hotels and nightclubs.
There is always something especially disquieting about real wealth sitting cheek-by-jowl with abject poverty.
In Izmir’s case the steady flow of Syrian refugees that arrive here have only added to the city’s demographic incongruity.
For these Syrians life is hard, especially at this time of year as winter sets in.
“In the past we have even burned some clothes in the stove, to keep us warm,” says Zainab who tells me that right now it is near impossible for her husband to find any work and the family have to borrow money for food.
I had travelled here to Izmir from that other Turkish city of Gaziantep that sits close to the Syrian border. My aim was to to try and gain some understanding of the difficulties facing the lives of Syrians designated as “urban refugees” by the few humanitarian agencies that have started working here in the hope of making the lives of these people better.
Unlike some who have chosen to continue on the hazardous journey to Europe many of the Syrians to be found in Izmir’s dilapidated neighbourhoods are among the poorest.
For them such an odyssey is often well beyond their financial means.
But there are others here too who simply want to stay in Turkey in the hope that some day they can retrace their steps and return to their homeland.
For three Kurdish families that I met though there is little chance of them returning any time soon to their home in Syria.
All are from the beleaguered city of Kobane which has been a battleground between Islamic State (IS) militants and Kurdish fighters since September 2014, when IS fighters overran this northern Syrian town, forcing almost all of its 400, 000 civilian population to flee across the frontier into Turkey.
The plight of Kobane epitomises the massive destructive power and human displacement that the Syrian war has inflicted. In this city over which the black flag of IS once fluttered clearly visible to refugees on the Turkish side of the border, every building, home, shop and street has been eviscerated in a storm of shells, bombs and bullets.
“Our house in Kobane is gone, destroyed, we have another family home in Aleppo and relations there, but I have no idea if it too has been destroyed or where our relatives are,” says Wadha, a sixty-five-year old grandmother who sits surrounded by her grandchildren.
In all 18 people are crammed into this small tumbledown house where Wadha lives including 13 children and one severely disabled young man.
One of the children, a little girl, is wearing a T-shirt with the words ‘Dreams Are Made For Bigger Dreams,’ emblazoned across the front.
One can only guess what dreams she and her siblings have of the future trapped here in this place where food and other basic essentials as well as educational opportunities are scarce.
“We have no stove, wood or charcoal and a lot of the time we live on bread smeared with tomato paste,” says Wadha, who also suffers from high blood pressure but cannot afford the 40 Turkish lira (TL) - £10 - needed to pay for the medication.
Neither can the family afford to pay for the adult diapers required by twenty-eight-year-old Suleyman, one of the eldest sons in the family who is severely disabled and sits alongside Wadha in a wheelchair his arms and legs badly contorted because of his condition.
As we speak swarms of flies rise and settle on the carpet in front of us, for this like many of the buildings in which Syrian refugees are housed in Mauvlana is also infested with bugs of all kinds.
Wadha says that all 18 people living here are totally dependent for their survival on two fathers who sometimes manage to get occasional work in the clothes or shoe making factories that sit within the district.
Inevitably of course, like all Syrians working here in Turkey, their wage falls well short of that which their Turkish counterparts would receive for the same work. Exploitation of Syrian urban refugee communities by Turkish employers and landlords is rife.
From these little earnings, a rent of 400TL (£90) water and electricity rates of 100TL and 150 TL has to be paid.
For these Kurdish children as with other Syrian refugee youngsters elsewhere in Mauvlana, there is little respite from the hardship. One little girl I spoke with summed up the limits of social interaction for children.
“I have my mother and brothers and sisters, but no other friends here,” she told be wistfully.
Though by law Syrian refugee children can attend Turkish schools, few it seems are able to find a place.
One of the Kurdish mothers tells me that one of her children has had no schooling in four years and only one made fourth grade before fleeing Kobane.
“I don’t want their future to be wasted,” she says facing the prospect of little improving for her offspring any time soon.
Language remains a major barrier for Syrian refugees both children and adults alike. Bad enough as it is to be forced into exile from one’s homeland, not being able to communicate in the language of the country in which you now reside causes major difficulties at every level.
In impoverished neighbourhoods like Mauvlana where Turkish families themselves often struggle to make ends meet there is no avoiding the obvious resentment the presence of the Syrian refugees has created among some locals.
One Syrian mother told of how during a trip to a local play park with her toddler son, she had no sooner placed him on a swing than a Turkish mother came forward took the boy off the swing and sat her own child in his place.
Walking the streets in the company of another young refugee mother carrying her baby, I would witness the jeers and offensive remarks made by a group of passing Turkish schoolchildren toward the woman.
Such behaviour is not uncommon towards Syrians with children especially often taunted or bullied.
Zaina is twenty-six-years-old and was a graduate in English literature from Aleppo University before she and her family fled the city four months ago as fighting raged.
“When I graduated the war began and I couldn’t find work because of the fighting, so when my house was bombed I came here to Izmir,” she told me.
Her husband, children and uncle are here with her, all sleeping on the floor of a small over populated house.
“This is not suitable for living it is so full of insects,” Zaina says adding that most of her children and those of other families living in the house are sick.
On the floor swaddled in blankets lies her daughter who is just a few months old and who for twenty days now has been very ill with a lung infection.
“I went to the hospital and they didn’t accept me because my identity card has not been renewed,” she explains, highlighting a recent administrative problem that has seen a numerical classification mix up on ID cards that has left many Syrian refugees barred from access to the services under which they are entitled by Turkish law.
Young, educated and highly motivated like so many Syrian refugees I met, Zaina would doubtless have done well and made a real contribution to the society of any country she might have found herself living in across Europe.
But that journey is not for her. As she shows me around the few rooms in which she and dozens of other refugees now live crammed together, she makes her case vociferously for staying in Turkey until the war is over and she can return home to Syria. She is incensed too with the condition in which she and her fellow Syrians are now living in Mauvlana.
“Look, where is the dignity for this man in his last days, he should be in his own home with the people he loves,” she says, pointing in the direction of a room where one very elderly man sits on a mattress. Clearly unwell and distressed, spread out on the floor before the old man are the boxes of pills and other medicines that he so desperately relies on but is quickly running short of.
It is vulnerable cases like this and families like those of Raina and Wadha in Mauvlana that humanitarian agency Mercy Corps is currently undertaking an assessment of in order to bring the appropriate help to those that need it most among Syrian refugees in urban areas.
Dalia Al-Aqwati Programme Director for Mercy Corps says that the agency has very good working relations with the Turkish authorities and makes the case that Turkey at an institutional level has been among the best of neighbouring countries when it comes to responding to the needs of Syrian refugees.
“More than 250,000 people depend on Mercy Corps assistance every month inside Syria though we are reaching well over 500,000 people,” she says.
“But as a humanitarian agency we also have to look at the needs of those urban refugees, who are now settled in Turkey itself as well as the work we do cross – border,” Al-Aqwati continues.
As winter sets in sometimes the needs for both those displaced internally in Syria and those now refugees in Turkey will mirror each other.
Basic necessities like blankets, warm clothing, mattresses and foodstuffs, will always be required, but often the aid supplied has to be packaged to meet specific needs.
In the case of those urban refuges living in places like Mauvlana, Mercy Corps collaborates with local on-the-ground partner groups to make that provision through financial and material support to help them though the winter and beyond.
In doing so Mercy Corps makes a conscious decision to buy local and keep money revolving within the local economy where possible.
These are important considerations when dealing with something on the scale of the Syrian refugee crisis.
It is only natural especially at the moment that people want to help and ‘send goods' like clothes and blankets, and while this is not wrong and certainly well intentioned, a far more effective, long-term response relies on local goods and suppliers bought through donations.
As with most well experienced, professional aid agencies, Mercy Corps also takes into account the effects that selected sourcing choices can have on issues such as poverty eradication, human rights, Fair-trade, sustainable development and inequality in the distribution of resources.
It might be for example that in one situation it is more ethical to procure locally to support the local economy and generate jobs while in another situation procuring locally would place an undue strain on limited local resources, such as water, or artificially inflate prices to the detriment of the local population.
Both inside Syria itself and among the urban refugees now struggling to survive in Turkey the challenges are immense.
As we prepare for Christmas here at home, Syria’s refugees are bracing themselves for one of the toughest winters they have faced in four long years.
That day just before I left Mauvlana district in Izmir, Raina the young mother from Aleppo was understandably worried about her sick baby daughter. How will you manage during the coming winter months I asked her?
“I don’t know,” she replied with a shrug before adding. “I only know we cannot do it alone.”