The 6 February earthquake caused widespread destruction over a large area of southern Turkey and northwestern Syria.

Within Syria, the worst-hit region was the opposition-held enclave, including Idlib and parts of Aleppo province, where at least 4,191 people were killed, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR).

In government-controlled areas, the death toll was at least 394 people, with most of those deaths reported in the town of Jableh in Latakia province, according to SNHR.

Other sources put the death toll in Syria even higher. A UN spokesperson told Siraj that at least 6,000 people had died in the country. The International Medical Corps said in April that 7,259 people were confirmed killed in Syria.

After more than a decade of war, the opposition-held region was already in a state of humanitarian crisis, with a population of 4.6 million swollen by those displaced from other areas by the conflict and aid deliveries into the enclave long restricted to a single border crossing from Turkey.

Search and rescue efforts after the earthquake largely relied on volunteers from the Syria Civil Defence, the so-called White Helmets who for years have operated as a de facto emergency service in opposition-held areas pummelled by air strikes and shelling.

Footage showed White Helmets volunteers and others desperately searching for survivors by digging through rubble with their hands and basic tools, highlighting the lack of specialist equipment and the improvised nature of the rescue effort.

“After the earthquake, I evacuated my three daughters from the house to the car and didn’t see them for five days,” said Ahmad Yaziji, a member of the Idlib branch of the Syria Civil Defence.

“Several other volunteers left the evacuation areas in order to bury their loved ones before rapidly returning to the rescue. There were so many locations where people were still alive and trapped under the rubble.”

According to the Syria Civil Defence, its volunteers rescued 2,950 people from the rubble and retrieved the bodies of 2,172 people from 182 sites.

The lack of an immediate UN-coordinated response prompted angry criticism from Raed al-Saleh, the head of the Syria Civil Defence.

Saleh told Siraj his organisation had sent distress calls to the UN on the day of the earthquake requesting the deployment of specialist rescue teams.

Opposition authorities including the Salvation Government, the civil administration in Idlib backed by the dominant Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militant group, and the Turkish-backed Syrian Interim Government in Azaz also requested international assistance.

“Let me be clear: The White Helmets received no support from the United Nations during the most critical moments of the rescue operations,” Saleh wrote in an opinion piece for CNN one week after the earthquake.

“The UN’s failure to respond quickly to this catastrophe is shameful. When I asked the UN why help had failed to arrive in time, the answer I received was bureaucracy. In the face of one of the deadliest catastrophes to strike the world in years, it seems the UN’s hands were tied by red tape.”

The critical importance of a quick response after an earthquake is embedded in search and rescue best practice.

In Turkey there were more than 7,800 live rescues within 24 hours of the earthquake. Despite a massive international effort, only 260 people were rescued alive over the next eight days.

In opposition-held Syria, the situation was very different. Families of some of the victims interviewed by Siraj have described hearing voices trapped under collapsed buildings for several days.

They believe their loved ones and many more lives could have been saved if rescue teams with appropriate equipment had been quickly deployed.

Muhammad al-Mustafa, 32, from the town of Jindires near the Turkish border, said he had to listen helplessly to the cries of his two-year-old son Wafeek and other members of his family trapped under the ruins of their home.

“It was like doomsday,” said Mustafa. “I remember how the voices started to fade on the second day. We couldn’t get them out on our own. There was so much rubble we needed specialist equipment.”

A search team eventually retrieved the bodies of Mustafa’s wife, son, parents and three siblings.

“The fact I could hear my child pleading for me to save him while I was unable to do so devastated me the most,” said Mustafa.

Similarly tragic scenes were playing out in towns and villages across the northwest.

In Bseenah, near Salqin in northwest Idlib province, 39-year-old Rami al-Abdullah said he could hear the screams of his wife and eldest daughter trapped under the rubble for two days after the quake. Only his one-and-a-half-year-old son was eventually pulled out alive.

“The whole village was demolished, and the Civil Defence could not reach everyone and save them,” said Abdullah. “Residents were trying to help, but they were afraid of aftershocks and new collapses.”

‘Coordination mechanisms’

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) operates an international emergency response system with the capacity to send rescue teams anywhere in the world within hours of a disaster.

The two main organisations, described by Ocha as “coordination mechanisms”, within this system are United Nations Disaster and Coordination (Undac) and the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (Insarag).

Undac’s responsibilities include assessing and coordinating emergency response missions, while Insarag is a network of search and rescue teams from 90 UN member states and international organisations.

Undac and Insarag typically send teams into disaster zones at the request of a government. But UN guidelines also allow for rescue efforts to be initiated by a UN resident coordinator in the affected country.

According to several sources who spoke to Siraj, including el-Mostafa Benlemlih, the UN’s resident coordinator in Syria until earlier this month, the Syrian government did file a request to the UN for help, but this was limited to government-controlled areas.

Benlemlih, who spoke to Siraj while he was still in the role, described Undac’s work as a “complement to national efforts”.

“The Undac team was deployed as soon as they received a request from the usual channels [the Syrian government]. The team was deployed to assess the situation in Aleppo, Latakia, Tartous, Homs and Hama,” said Benlemlih.

Asked why Undac had not deployed to opposition-held areas, Benlemlih said the UN had been “fully prepared to support those affected in Idlib and [opposition-held areas of] Aleppo”.

But he added: “However, the activation of the response system is linked to the approval of the concerned authorities, and is also linked to the provision of mechanisms to support logistical work and protection. These conditions were not available even for the humanitarian support we tried to deliver in the first hours of the disaster.”

Earlier this month, the UN named Adam Abdelmoula as its new residential coordinator in Syria.

Documents obtained by Siraj also show UN and Syrian officials discussed sending aid convoys – but not search and rescue teams – into opposition-held areas in the days after the earthquake.

But no convoys were sent across the front line. According to Reuters, the delivery of aid from government-held areas was opposed by HTS.

Details about Insarag’s response within Syria, and issues which hindered the UN rescue effort in the country, were discussed at a meeting of Insarag team leaders in Singapore on 28 February.

Search and rescue teams from Russia, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates were deployed to Latakia, and teams from Tunisia, Armenia, Algeria and China were deployed to Aleppo, according to a presentation delivered at the meeting.

But challenges faced by Undac and Insarag included a “lack of awareness of the Government of Syria of the international response mechanisms” and the “lack of a basic structure to receive and coordinate international assistance including USAR [urban search and rescue]”.

Team leaders complained that coordination had been complicated by the involvement of multiple entities, including civil defence, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and national security, and by an “inconsistent approach of LEMA [local emergency management agency] in assigning USAR teams to geographic sectors”.

The Syrian government had not responded at the time of publication to questions from Siraj and MEE about why it had not asked for international rescue teams to be deployed to opposition-controlled areas.

In response to questions about why Undac and Insarag teams were not deployed into opposition-held Syria, Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for Ocha, said the deployment of search and rescue teams through Insarag was a matter for national governments rather than the UN.

Laerke said: “To be clear, the United Nations does not have search-and-rescue capabilities, including heavy machinery, nor does it decide which teams deploy to which countries for how long.”

Ocha’s role through Undac, he said, was limited to coordinating the work of search and rescue teams and sharing updates about casualties, damage and requests for assistance.

“While the UN can decide where to deploy its own staff, the decision to deploy national search-and-rescue teams rests solely with the national governments of those teams,” said Laerke.

‘Speed is critical’

Yet the failure of the UN to coordinate the deployment of search and rescue teams into opposition-controlled areas appears to fall short of Undac’s own guidelines on responding to “complex emergencies”, such as in countries in a state of civil war.

These guidelines are contained in the Undac Handbook, a reference guide for Undac team members involved in emergency missions.

The handbook acknowledges that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states must be fully respected, and that humanitarian assistance should be provided with the consent of the affected country.

But it makes an exception in circumstances in which “the legitimacy and territory of the State is under, often violent, dispute”.

The guidance reads: “This situation makes the adherence to the above principles problematic in complex emergencies. In these cases the commitment to the victims may supersede the commitment to the State.”

The handbook advises that “coordination efforts will need to acknowledge the legitimacy of competing authorities [and]… maintain effective relationships not only with the State but also with the antagonists and political opposition”.

It stresses, too, the urgency of deploying emergency teams as quickly as possible, particularly in the aftermath of an earthquake.

“In a natural disaster speed of response is critical and is measured in hours and days. This is especially so in an earthquake situation where trapped people are unlikely to survive more than 3-4 days unless rescued.”

According to one legal expert, the Syrian government’s failure to request or facilitate the deployment of rescue teams to opposition-held territory may be in breach of principles of international humanitarian law established through the Geneva Conventions guaranteeing access to conflict zones for humanitarian actors.

“If the Syrian authorities refused these teams entry into areas beyond their control, this is an arbitrary rejection prohibited by international law,” said Sama Kiki, executive director of the Syrian Legal Development Programme, a UK-based legal advocacy organisation.

Kiki added that a periodically renewed UN Security Council resolution permitting humanitarian aid to be sent into northwest Syria from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing offered a further legal avenue, and an established route, for Undac and Insarag teams to be deployed into opposition territory.

Bodies instead of aid

The situation in northwest Syria was in stark contrast to the UN response in southern Turkey, where Insarag deployed 221 search and rescue teams from 82 countries in support of the rescue effort by Turkey’s own disaster agency (Afad), according to documents reviewed by Siraj.

In Idlib, the only international response in the days after the earthquake was a visit by a three-person Spanish team who crossed into Syria through Bab al-Hawa on 9 February independently of the UN aid effort.

Mazen Aloush, the media officer for the crossing, said the visit had been coordinated by a Salvation Government charitable support coordination office. It lasted only a few hours and was limited in its scope to assessing the damage, Aloush said.

Muhammad al-Sadiq, a Salvation Government spokesperson, said the Spanish team had trained local volunteers to use a sensor device to detect people still alive under the rubble.

No other equipment was provided, and hopes of finding any further survivors had by then mostly faded.

The Syria Civil Defence head Saleh told Siraj that assessment teams from a number of UN agencies finally entered opposition-held Syria six days after the earthquake.

“These were needs assessment teams, and not search and rescue,” Saleh said.

“After six days people had already died. No one was left from those who were alive.”

Those critical of the UN’s failure to send search and rescue teams and heavy-duty rescue equipment into Idlib through Bab al-Hawa question remarks, made by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on 9 February, in which he said damage to roads leading to the crossing had hindered the aid effort.

According to Aloush, the spokesperson for Bab al-Hawa, within hours of the earthquake the bodies of Syrians killed in Turkey were being delivered to the border post.

“On the evening of the same day, we received cars carrying bodies from all the stricken Turkish provinces without any problem on the roads,” he said.

Border crossing authorities reported 85 bodies delivered to Bab al-Hawa one day after the earthquake, with the number rising over the next few days to more than 1,200. Photos and videos posted on social media showed some of these bodies being delivered on flatbed trucks.

Laerke, the Ocha spokesperson, told Siraj that cross-border aid into northwest Syria had been briefly suspended due to road damage and because of casualties and injuries among staff at a UN aid hub in Reyhanli.

The failings of the UN response were frankly acknowledged by Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian relief chief, during a visit to Bab al-Hawa on 12 February.

“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” Griffiths wrote in a tweet.

“My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can. That’s my focus now.”

The following day, Griffiths was in Damascus for talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Soon afterwards, two more border crossings from Turkey into opposition-held northwest Syria had opened for the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Fadel Abdul Ghany, the chairman of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said that serious questions remained unanswered about the failure of the UN to deploy search and rescue teams into opposition-held territory.

“There was negligence on the part of the United Nations,” he said. “This is incomprehensible, unjustified, immoral and illegal.”

Ghany believes that at least dozens of lives could have been saved if the UN had taken prompt and decisive action. He said he had called on the UN to conduct an internal investigation but had not received a response.

UN officials, he said, had talked at length about the mechanisms and details of the earthquake response, but without providing adequate answers as to what had gone wrong.

“In the end, all of these mechanisms failed,” said Ghany.

The post Syrian government blocked UN earthquake response in opposition areas appeared first on SIRAJ.

On a video call, Maryam narrates the details of her daily routine that has remained unchanged in the times of COVID-19.

She wakes up everyday at dawn before waking the rest of her family, to start preparing for work. Collectively, the family starts preparing food in large quantities sufficient for everyone.

Around 1,000 refugees live in the Ahl al Qur’an camp, and after the recent wave of displacement, the number has increased, according to the camp’s director, Muhammad Sheikh Ismail.

“Here, social distancing and preventive measures recommended by the World Health Organization and other associations are not possible,” he said.

“There are no health or service facilities in the camps, and the number of tents is simply not sufficient for the number of people. Consequently, social distancing and self-isolation is not possible.”

“In each tent (two meters wide and three meters long), there are at least five people who share food and drink, while each section (consisting of 40 tents) has a total of six toilets; three for men and three for women,” Ismail said.

Despite the ongoing threat of the virus, residents felt reassured due to the blockade imposed by the Syrian government, and the Turkish government’s closure of three land crossings: Bab al-Hawa, Safety door, and Jarablos.

Airports and other ports have also been relatively empty since the area’s first recorded case.

However, the severity of the situation evolved after July 9 when the first cases were recorded at Bab Al-Hawa hospital, specifically, in a Syrian doctor who recently moved to Turkey.

There was great fear and concern that the cases would continue to spread due to the absence of preventive measures.

A study carried out by the Medicare Health Foundation, in cooperation with the health directorates in northern Syria, set out to assess the number of potential coronavirus cases, and found that the possibility for widespread infection is extremely high if necessary precautions are not taken.

The study indicated that in the first six weeks, cases may reach up to 240,000 (which represent 20% of the internally displaced population), of which 36,000 would be severe, 12,000 would be critical and 14,328 would be fatal.

These areas mostly rely on preventive measures implemented and funded by civil societies and organizations that are already limited in their capabilities and resources.

Director of Latakia (with jurisdiction over the Ahl al-Qur’an Camp) in the Syrian Civil Defense, Muhammad Haji Asaad, sheds light on some of the preventive measures that have been implemented.

“From late April to early September we sterilized 115 camps distributed from Al-Zouf to the village of Badama, including the Ahl al Qur’an camp.

We also sterilized approximately 22 villages in the western countryside of Idlib, and targeted areas with high population densities,” he said.

Dr. Mahmoud al-Hariri, the director of the health information unit in northern Syria (including Hama, Aleppo, the Sahel and Idlib) who works directly with the WHO, told ARIJ that, “[Until September], we only had one laboratory in Idlib equipped with tools for analyzing samples.

It was proposed to equip two new laboratories; one in the city of Jarablus [northeast of Aleppo] and the second in the city of Afrin [north of Aleppo]. Some of the equipment has arrived, albeit late, and included 6,0000 analysis kits and tests, which will be activated very soon.”

Dr. Muhammad Al-Salem, director of the vaccine program and member of the Early Warning and Epidemic Response Network, says that “1,390 tests were conducted for suspected cases by the end of June, all of which were negative.”

According to Al-Salem, the lab in Idlib analyses results from various areas and is not restricted to the governorate alone. Samples collected from Deir Ezzor, Raqqa, Aleppo and Hasaka were analyzed in Idlib, he told ARIJ.

The ACU runs the only laboratory in the opposition-controlled areas of northern Syria. According to Al-Salem, the protocol for positive tests is as follows: in the event of a positive result, a second swab is taken from the potential patient and transferred to Turkey for confirmation.

The confirmation is typically provided 24 hours after the test is conducted. As for the hospitals directly supported by Turkey and located in the northern and northeastern countryside of Aleppo, samples are collected there and then sent to Turkey.

Just two days after the first COVID-19 case was recorded in opposition-controlled areas,  specifically on July 11, the Ministry of Health of Syria’s interim government announced that the number of cases had risen to three – two of which belonged to doctors working in the Azaz City Hospital who had recently entered from Turkey.

As of 23 July, the number of confirmed cases had risen to 22 out of 3,111 tested, according to Dr. M. Ram Al-Sheikh.

On September 5, the Early Warning Network announced an additional 14 recorded cases — the highest since the pandemic reached the north, bringing the total number of cases to 112.

The accelerated rate at which COVID-19 cases were being recorded, only increased fears in light of already extremely difficult living conditions.

An Exhausted Medical Sector

“Currently, Northern Syria does not have a unified health system, and only a few limited health institutions are operating at maximum capacity to fulfil the needs of more than 4 million people in an unstable and unprepared area,” says Dr. Yasser Najeeb, Executive Director of an Immunization Group in Syria.

The group consists of a medical team that provides vaccines for children under the supervision of the WHO, and is one of several working to tackle the crisis in northern Syria, with support from the WHO.

The ARIJ reporter attempted to contact Dr. Munther Khalil, the Director of the Idlib Health Directorate and responsible for coordinating medical support in the governorate, who did not respond.

Al-Salem describes the medical sector as “exhausted”.

“In northern Syria, there are only 600 doctors serving over 4 million people, a third of which live in overcrowded camps on the border with Turkey. We need at least four times the current number of doctors, and qualified laboratory technicians are very rare. Moreover, the infrastructure has been completely destroyed, and most of the hospitals currently operating are relatively rudimentary,” he told ARIJ.

Dr. Mahmoud Al-Hariri added that, “we fear there will be a great number of casualties among medical staff. As of September 8, we recorded 10 cases among the medical teams, which forced them to remain in isolation for 15 days. For us, it is a big problem for a doctor to be absent throughout this period in light of their scarcity.”

There are only 90-100 respirators available in the entire northern region of Syria, which are meant to serve 4 million people in normal conditions, excluding the pandemic and warzones. Of the total number of respirators, 80 to 85 devices are already being used around the clock, according to Al-Salem, leaving only a few devices available.

In its 2019 annual report, the Syrian Network for Human Rights documented the death of 26 medical personnel and a total of 98 attacks on medical facilities in that year alone. The attacks were also confirmed in a report by Physicians for Human Rights, which recorded 595 attempted attacks on 350 separate medical facilities, with a death toll of 923 medical workers between March 2011 and February 2020.

According to Dr. Hariri, the WHO has formed a working group, under its direct supervision, for local organizations to confront the pandemic since March.

The group operates in coordination with health directorates, and has a budget of $64 million for a period of six months.

Al-Salem also indicated that Global Health provides safety equipment for workers in the medical sector, and more is scheduled to be sent in the coming period. It has also provided both online and in person training for medical personnel.

“Only four quarantine centers were equipped out of 30. Additionally, just four out of nine hospitals were equipped according to the medical plan initially drafted by medical organizations, with the support of the WHO, to confront the virus,” Al-Salem added.

Local Organizations

According to Mustafa Al-Hassan, the Protection Coordinator at the Sadad Humanitarian organization, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) allocated $11 million to support response projects, increase hygiene in the camps and support the water and health sector.

It later announced a $75 million grant that would be allocated to organizations, subject to the OCHA’s approval, and according to their projects and plans. These funding figures have been confirmed and matched by three independent sources, but have not been published by the OCHA itself.

For Al-Hassan, “the problem is that most of the organizations working in the humanitarian field in northern Syria are not committed to pandemic prevention measures, and only a few are implementing the appropriate safety and awareness measures amongst their staff.”

Dr. Hariri insists that “no health system is capable of confronting the pandemic without a societal commitment to preventive measures, which is why it is imperative to equip hospitals and isolation centers.

For example, the cost of equipping an intensive care bed can reach up to $13,000 while the cost of a mask is less than half a dollar, and it provides a large amount of protection and largely reduces the risk of infection.”

“However,” he continued, “the majority of the public does not comply with these simple preventative measures. We have even spotted some health sector workers who are not committed to wearing masks.”

The ARIJ reporter found numerous instances of aid organizations not adhering to minimal preventative measures, such as masks.

Beyond the social media accounts of these organizations, which show staff in masks and adhering to the minimal standards, most of the fieldwork is conducted without the necessary health and safety precautions.

Director of the Maram Relief and Development Organization, Yaqzan al-Shishakli, indicated that since last April, his organization has established an isolation and quarantine center in the village of Sheikh Bahr in the countryside of Idlib.

The center provides services to those affected by COVID-19 in a well-equipped arena, to ensure that the virus is not transmitted. Al-Shishakli said that as of September 1, the center has not received a single case.

“The center has a capacity of 160 people and is designed to double its size within a week in the event of an increase in cases, to accommodate 320 people. The center also aims to relieve pressure on local hospitals and coordinates with Idlib Health so that their work is under their supervision,” Al-Shishakli told ARIJ.

Al-Shishakli confirms that his organization has provided several training sessions and workshops on safety and prevention measures, and that the organization has shifted the schools they supervise to e-learning, especially since most of the schools in northern Syria have completely shut down.

“We tried to complete the school year with our 4800 students online, and deliver all the lessons through WhatsApp. However, we faced some accessibility issues, because some families did not have access to WiFi and blackouts meant that the internet was not particularly reliable,” he added.

Chaos and Clashing Authorities

In a region dominated by chaos and lawlessness, the authorities and military organizations seek to gain from the COVID-19 crisis without considering the dangers and consequences of a virus spread.

All decisions aimed at preventing the spread of the virus and issued by the Salvation Government (loyal to the Al-Nusra Front) which manages the city of Idlib and some parts of its countryside, have been superficial, according to Muhammad Haj Hammoud.

Hammoud, a Syrian journalist and Director of the Idlib Plus network, explains how efforts by the authorities are ultimately driven by ulterior motives. Specifically, authorities aim to use this crisis to strengthen their influence “on the ground” and narrow their grip and power over civilians.

This investigation monitored a number of decisions that have effectively put civilians’ lives in danger.

For example, the decision taken on April 2 to suspend Friday prayers in mosques lasted just two weeks. This was a major issue, especially given the month of Ramadan and the increased amount of prayers in local mosques, which continued despite the ongoing crisis and in the absence of any preventative or precautionary measures.

Then, on May 31, came the decision to grant exemptions for vehicle registration fees within a period of 15 days, “with the aim of encouraging people to go back to normality”.

This resulted in citizens flocking to register their vehicles, causing severe congestion, and forcing the government to extend the initial grace period.

This also led to an increase in the risk of contracting COVID-19. Here, the authorities are criticized for attempting to “return to normality” when their interests are clearly focused on remedying the financial deficit and issues with their treasury, instead of prioritizing people’s lives and their safety.

Furthermore, no decision was issued to limit commercial or industrial activity in the governorate. Instead, the Salvation Government tried to open new crossings and trade routes, which threatened the isolation of Idlib and put it at risk of infection from neighbouring areas.

According to various sources (from the Ministry of Health and other unofficial sources), as of June, the neighboring areas had already recorded at least 204 cases. This is despite numerous warnings from the Doctors’ Union in Northern Syria regarding the dangers of opening these crossings.

On April 15, the Headquarters for the “Liberation of Al-Sham” announced the opening of a commercial crossing with areas near the city of Saraqib, due to pressure from the business owners and traders trying to compensate for their losses after the crossings with Turkey were closed. However, the authorities stood to gain from taxes imposed on all vehicles using the crossing, in either direction.

Demonstrations quickly spread in northern Syria, and several popular parties issued statements rejecting the decision and demanding that the crossing be closed. In response to the protests, the authorities simply opened a crossing in a different area in the western countryside of Aleppo on April 30.

Tahrir al-Sham published a video of the crossing’s activities and the entry of trucks from regime-controlled areas. Once again, the people protested by organizing a sit-in to express their opposition to the authorities’ decision. However, the authorities retaliated by shooting at protestors, killing some.

A worker in a local organization speaking on the condition of anonymity, indicates that “the most dangerous thing for humanitarian organizations operating in the northern regions is the interference of the Government through the Office of the Displaced Administration and the Office of Organizations Affairs.

It would be impossible for an organization to operate in those areas or in the camps without their approval, and obstructing these organizations prevents aid from reaching those who need it.”

Due to deteriorating economic conditions, the collapse of the Syrian currency, the threat of the pandemic, and the implementation of the Caesar Act, the suffering and needs of civilians have increased, thereby increasing their dependence on relief and humanitarian organizations.

Ahmed Abdel Hakim, a displaced person who lives in a camp on the Syrian-Turkish border in the western countryside of Idlib, explains how the aid he receives is crucial in sustaining him and his family.

He told ARIJ that if the aid provided to him is cut for just one month, he and his family face starvation and food insecurity, as he is unemployed and without a source of income.

On July 11, after great difficulty, the UN Security Council voted on Resolution No. 2533, which stipulates the renewal of the mechanism for the introduction of cross-border humanitarian aid, specifically through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing that connects northern Syria and Turkey, for a period of one year.

The resolution also called on the UN Secretary General to submit their report on the functioning and progress of the aforementioned mechanism to the Security Council at least once every 60 days.

This investigation was completed with support of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ).

SIRAJ —Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism

The post COVID-19: A Ticking Time Bomb in Northern Syria and its Refugee Camps appeared first on SIRAJ.

In Idlib’s countryside, elderly residents of informal camps are deprived of primary healthcare services, usually offered by makeshift hospitals, and quarantine facilities, which camp areas lack. The situation corresponds to increasing concerns over the outbreak since the first positive case was announced on 10 July 2020 by the Minister of Health of the Syrian Interim Government, who constantly posts updated case figures. In areas held by the Syrian regime, cases are also on the rise, amounting to 417, according to the Ministry of Health. Furthermore, cases throughout Syria are being tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO), which reports new confirmed cases, as well. 

The United Nations (UN), for its part, warned against a healthcare catastrophe if the pandemic continues to spread significantly in north Syria, given the failing healthcare system, shortage for ventilators, and other supplies necessary for combating COVID-19. Moreover, the UN designated $385 millions to cover additional 2020 needs, as to cope with the pandemic in the full range of Syria.

Nonetheless, it appears that the UN warnings are in no way close to being heeded.

Suffering from diabetes and hypertension, Badriyah is fretting over contracting coronavirus, saying that she is regularly feverish due to the extremely hot weather. This had her obsessed, particularly with the surge in confirmed cases.  

Like most of the elderly in the informal camps, Badriyah complains about the absence of healthcare facilities, while test centres are tens of kilometres away from the camp where she lives. The situation is made further complicated by extreme poverty and the people’s inability to reach these centres to conduct the necessary texts or purchase preventative needs.

Camps off preventative formworks

One-third of Idlib’s population lives in tents, urging Cristian Reynders, Doctors without Borders (MSF) field coordinator for northwest Syria, to say that indeed, most recommendations for protecting people against the virus and slowing down its spread simply cannot be implemented in Idlib. He, furthermore, raised an ethical question, that probably will remain unanswered: “People are also asked to practice good hygiene measures and wash their hands frequently. But how can you practice good hygiene when you live surrounded by mud?”

Sharing Reynders’ thoughts on the matter, Ahmad al-Dabis, UOSSM Syria Program director,  told the reporter that: “Preventative measures cannot be maintained in the camps, for they are extremely crowded. Moreover, the personal hygiene-related preventative rules cannot be kept due to lacking water, sanitation and joint bathrooms, which do not adhere to requirements. This applies to villages and cities alike, for there are group housing places that cannot be controlled, not to mention that thousands of families are coerced to share one or two rooms with one or more families.”

UOSSM is a non-government union for relief and healthcare organizations, registered in Turkey, UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland.

Displaced from southern rural Idlib, Abu Ahmad (64) lives in an informal camp near the Turkish border. He does not show the slightest interest in our COVID-19-related questions after the first positive case was reported in north Syria. He is, rather, busy counting the money he made today for working on a nearby farm. “We do not care about Corona any more. Even without it, we were barely having enough food. Anyways, we are almost dead,” he said. “How could we keep preventative rules? Is it with masks, sanitizers and detergents that cost a fortune, or with dirty shared bathrooms? Or should we do it with water that we do not really have?” 

On his turn, Yakoub Murad, a Syrian doctor based in the Turkish city of Reyhanlı, explained that to boost the immune system, older people need to eat various types of healthy food, maintain psychological stability, and keep away from stress and anxiety. Even upon contracting the virus, they have to uphold the same measures. However, none of these requirements can be met in the camps, for living conditions are pretty challenging there, at the villages also, including that mad rise in prices and lacking emotional stability caused by military operations and constant displacement.  

 Nursing homes in the clutches of fear

Mustafa al-Nasser (63), originally a resident of Damascus, has been living in Dar al-Salama Nursing Home in Azaz City, northern rural Aleppo,  for three years, after he lost his family, wife and three children in the military combat in 2012. “I am scared that the disease might spread here as well. I quit going outside altogether. I no longer shake hands, and I frequently wash my hands.  I am not sure when the disease will disappear, but I always wonder, what would happen to me if I caught the virus? What if I needed healthcare?” he said. 

Founded in 2013, the nursing home was a mere tent, with a capacity to accommodate nine persons. In early 2018, however, the nursing home was moved to a four-room-building, with utilities. Today, the home can host 18 to 25 persons, along with six staffers.

Ziad Najar, the nursing home director, stressed that the management was keen on adopting preventative measures against COVID-19, including disinfecting the building, distributing masks, washing clothes on a regular basis and preventing elderly from mixing with strangers. A number of the inmates are mentally-disordered, who cannot be controlled in terms of hygiene and social distancing, while tightness of space continues to give them a hard time, he added.

The nursing home does not receive stable funding from any entity, Najar reported, and it is completely dependent on personal donations, adding that the home is today deficient and burdened with debts. Asking the director about potential COVID-19 positive cases, he said: “Inmates are transferred to the nearby International Blue Crescent Hospital once suspected of contracting the virus. But still, we are not sure how we will manage if cases continue to increase.”

 In north Syria, places such as first-class nursing homes do not exist. Rather, there are big and modestly furnished houses, occupied by elderly and persons with disabilities, which are operated through personal donations only, spreading in Salqin, Azaz, and al-Dana, among other areas. In the strip between rural Aleppo and Idlib, where four million persons at least live, quarantine facilities are either lacking or are not properly equipped to accommodate elederly, who might contract the virus. 

Fear and concern necessitate unity

Difficulties suffered by elederly and nursing homes in north Syria almost match those endured by old people in the northeastern parts of the country,  particularly in al-Hasaka and Raqqa, where the Women’s Committee of the Autonomous Administration supervises nursing homes. 

In Rmelan, far east of Syria, officials, running the Viyan (Emarah) Elderly Women Nursing Home, are also facing COVID-19 severe repercussions and its ever increasing threat, amidst shortage for supplies and medicaid. 

Opened in March 2016, the nursing home has the capacity to accommodate 10 women only, and it is run by four women staffers, who take turns around the clock. 

“Even staffers must adhere to certain daily measures. They have to change their clothes upon entering the nursing home, for instance. They also have to keep their hands sanitized and masks on all the time. Furthermore, they are on a diet, drinking lots of liquids and eating fruits, to boost their immune system in case an outbreak occurs,” Najah, a supervisor at the nursing home, said. 

 Family visits are also conditioned by a set of preventative measures, which the home adopts to protect the eledrly women, including social distancing, wearing masks, disinfecting hands and keeping a safe distance as a basis to prevent the transmission of the virus. 

“A major difficulty that we constantly face is that eledrely women have their families in mind all the time. One woman, for example, asks her son to come and see her regularly; another asks her daughter to do so; a third would miss having her sisters around. We, thus, ask family members to visit the elederly women at their request. When the latter meet their relatives, the emotions we get to feel cannot simply be put into words,” Najah added. 

insufficient awareness and prevention 

Addressing responsive action in the area, Dr. Ahmad al-Dabis pointed out to the awareness campaigns launched by UOSSM, which target locals in the suburbs of Aleppo and Idlib, adding that masks, disinfectants, sinitizers, and gloves were distributed at the camps, particularly to the most vulnerable groups, including elderly and people suffering from chronic diseases, such as  diabetes, cancer, asthma and  hepatitis. The population is massive and the demand is overwhelming, al-Dabis said, stressing that UOSSM’s response covers very little of the humanitarian needs of four million civilians in the area. 

Suffering thus at the camps, some hundred thousand internally displaced persons (IDPs) decided to abandon the tents and head back to their destroyed homes, mostly located near fronts or war lines, one of whom was Abu Muhammad. The sixty-something man went back to his home in Taftanaz city, rural Idlib. Having returned, Abu Muhammad told the reporter that he is not scared of the disease anymore, for he washes frequently to perform prayers.  At the same time, he noted that no leaflets were distributed, nor prevention-aimed awareness campaigns were launched to address the disease, adding that he performs group prayers everyday because the pandemic has not spread in the city yet. Furthermore, staying in his city, despite the danger and the bombing, is better than being displaced at the camps, where preventive measures and healthcare services are nonexistent, he said, especially that at a certain point he was coerced to share the same room with 13 other people when he was still at the camp. 

Interviewed in Taftanz city too, Basheer al-Khatib, seventy-something, said that he tries to keep a distance from people with flue, refrains from showing up at public gathering places and tight spaces were people tend to assemble, stressing that no prevention-awareness campaigns are addressing the disease, despite the large population density. Masks or disinfectants were not distributed, as well. 

Almost in all the cities in north Syria, bazzars, popular markets opened on specific days of the week, were still being held when the report was being prepared, and no decisions were passed as to officially prevent such gatherings. 

The Early Warning Alert and Response Network (EWARN), a local healthcare group operating in north Syria, posted counsel and guidance to help edlerly protect themselves from contracting COVID-19, including washing hands, avoiding large-scale gatherings and staying away from people showing symptoms of any illnesses. 

Moreover, the EWARN stressed that diabetic people must ont skip their medications and that they should closely monitor their blood glucose, adding that people should immediately seek medical assistance upon coughing, having a fever or shortness of breath, pointing that asthma patients must keep inhalers close by. Cancer patients, the group advised, must also seek medical assistance upon coughing, having a fever or shortness of breath, accentuating that keeping these measures is a necessity, for no vaccine or treatment has been developed to counter COVID-19 so far. 

Healthcare facilities out of service

In northwest Syria, namely Idlib and rural Aleppo, medical supplies are very few, for healthcare sectors were systematically targeted by Russia and the Syrian regime in early 2020. The military campaigns rendered about 70% of the healthcare facilities out of service, estimated at 75 makeshift medical posts, either dispensaries or hospitals, that were inoperable partially or completely. Additionally, a number of facilities were turned unserviceable when controlled by the regime’s forces.  

This situation, UOSSM reported, led to the collapse of the already over stretched  healthcare system. There are 200 intensive care beds, and only 100 ventilators for more than four million people, which are extremely insufficient to accommodate Covid-19 patients, especially since these modest numbers of beds and ventilators are already in use, accommodating cancer, trauma, and wounded patients, as well as those with cardiac and liver diseases.  

The Ministry of Health of the Syrian Interim Government, for its part,  stated that since it first started to conduct Covid-19 tests last March, about three thousand people were examined, as they were suspected of being infected with the virus, adding that most of the tests were carried out at a single testing center and using the only device available.  Confirmed cases in the target areas amounted to 12, when the investigation was being conducted on 18 July.

Alarming scenarios

On 7 May 2020, a predictive report, obtained by the reporter, prepared by the Health Information Unit (HIS) of the Health Directorates in northwest Syria, in cooperation with a number of Syrian and international experts, showed that either of the three following scenarios lies ahead of the area.

The first scenario expects that in the eighth week into the outbreak, positive cases will jump to 16,384, while 2,458 cases will need hospitalization. The severe cases, however, that require admittance into intensive care and ventilators will be 819.

In the eighth week, the second scenario expects, positive cases will mount to 185,364, including 9,268 requiring intensive care and ventilators.

As for the third scenario, it focuses on the status of the population most in need, namely the newly displaced and elderly, whose number amounts to 1.2 million. This scenario expects that in the sixth week, the number of cases will reach 240,000 in the camps alone, 12,000 of which will require intensive care and ventilators. 

Given these alarming predictions and the scarce resources of the healthcare sector, elderly will be in a battle with the pandemic, unprotected and uncared for, particularly those living in the camps. 

During the latest military campaign, which Russian and regime forces embarked on in early 2020, about one million Syrians from Hama, Idlib and Aleppo suburbs were displaced to separate areas of northwest Syria, bringing the total number of displaced people there to 1.4 million, according to statistics issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in May 2020. These people reside either in uninhabitable homes or in official or otherwise unofficial camps, most of which lack all life’s essentials, thus, turning them into the most vulnerable group to contract Covid-19, since the random environment and absence of hygiene measures, drinking and household water, and disinfectants make the area an ideal incubator for the the virus to spread, as reported by the HIS of health directorates in Idlib. 

In a tweet, Mark Cutts,  the UN deputy regional humanitarian coordinator, warned against a modest response to the predicted health disaster, which he attributed to the reduced number of authorized crossings for the crossborder response into northwest Syria, decided by the Security Council in its recent meeting on the means of delivering humanitarian aid to north Syria. 

The warning was also echoed by Dr. Muhammad al-Issa, the health official of SAMS office in Turkey (the Syrian American Medical Society), who said that the pre-Covid-19 health status  was already critical and that people with chronic diseases were not fully provided with needed healthcare services. If the pandemic spreads, some healthcare facilities might turn inoperable, unable to provide primary services necessary to combat the outbreak, which places north Syria before a new healthcare dilemma.  

Regarding SAMS precautionary measures, al-Issa added that it has conducted (online) training, preparing many medical staffers to cope with COVID-19, and set up three quarantine facilities, in addition to the logistic support it provided to healthcare facilities as to help them affront all outbreak forms, explaining that the healthcare sector in Syria ranks as low as the second place out of five, the thing that keeps it out of  international top ratings. 

Given that situation, while UN and non-government organizations fail to answer the needs reported above, Badriyah will continue to be caged by fear, and hundreds of thousands of old people will be having an unfair battle against a fatal pandemic that might bring them to their demise.

The Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ)

Accounts addressing northeast Syria were obtained by colleague Rusheen Habo, based in al-Qamishli. 

The post Syria: Hope no longer enough, as COVID-19 Haunts Elderly appeared first on SIRAJ.

Samar, a Syrian girl from Aleppo, had no idea her marriage to a rich Saudi man in Istanbul would only last one day. This 22-year-old had been longing for a more stable life, away from the atrocities of war. Her hope vanished when she realized she was a victim of a short-term marriage, arranged by her matchmaker, or khattaba, whom she met by chance, when she shared rooms with her and other single Syrian girls in Istanbul. The matchmaker sent Samar’s picture to the Saudi man who was 35 years her senior. He accepted. The wedding ceremony was held quickly, and just as abruptly, the marriage ended.

With a sad face, Samar tells how “a sheikh and two witnesses came over, and my so-called husband gave me 2000 dollars as dowry, then took me to an apartment he rented. The very next day, I woke up to a note saying the rent was paid for, and that he left and was not coming back. The landlady told me not to worry, ‘I’ll find you another husband if you want.”

“Girls’ Residence”

The famous al-Fatih neighbourhood, in the heart of Istanbul, is a business and trade center for Syrians. This is where the girls’ stories usually begin. Around here, they can find special rentals, known as “Girls’ Residence,” where the landlady often turns out to be a professional matchmaker. Most roommates are refugees, some entered Turkey illegally, others are struggling with some kind of social problem or other. There are divorcées, widows, as well as minors who came from Syria unaccompanied.

Their difficult financial situation makes these Syrian refugee girls vulnerable to exploitation by matchmakers and brokers who see in them a mere money-making opportunity, and who resort to swindling and theft to take advantage of them. 

Fatima Abdul-Aziz is the head of “Al-Kawakiby Women’s Organization in Mersin, Turkey,” which is concerned with Syrian refugee women’s affairs. She believes that “what most contributes to this phenomenon are the dissociation of family and social ties, poverty, and the seduction of what is often presented to these girls as a more comfortable and secure life.” 

On July 11, I was able to get a copy of an arrest warrant in the northwestern city of  Sakarya, issued against a Syrian female matchmaker, charged with facilitating prostitution, deception and fraud. A dispute between two men, one Saudi, the other Syrian, led to her arrest. In her deposition, the matchmaker admits to fraud, as she took money to arrange marriages, but denied prostitution charges.  

Numbers

According to a survey by the Directorate General of Migration Management, a subdivision of the Turkish Ministry of Interior, of the 4 million Syrian refugees in the country, around 1.4 million are female. 

United Nations puts at 1.2 million the number of Syrians working without a permit in Turkey. The majority accept much lower wages and more severe conditions than Turkish workers would.

Evrensel website published a study that found “most Syrians are living below the poverty line and working without social security. 50% are unemployment, and 13% have applied for financial aid.” The study was conducted by the Center for Social Policies, and took place in the provinces that host the largest numbers of Syrian refugees. 

While both official and NGO statistics on fraudulent marriages are lacking, and judging from the cases reviewed by the center, Abdul-Aziz asserts that “matchmaker” has become a pseudonym for a type of broker who provides Syrian refugee wives for Arab men in return for a commission, well aware that such marriages would not last long: “Lately, we have been receiving many legal inquiries into fraud, committed in the name of marrying Syrian refugees,” she adds.

Secrecy and Fear

Majd Tabba’, a lawyer who has examined several such cases in Turkey, thinks that the dearth of data is due to the fact that “victims of these widespread marriages tend to keep them a secret, for fear of social stigma and family rejection.”

A One-day Marriage

It was indeed difficult to meet women who fell victim to the matchmakers’ network. Many keep a low profile and refuse to talk about this sensitive topic. Those who did talk requested their names be withheld to protect their privacy. 

Samar, who came to Turkey two years ago, recalls that she was first introduced to Um-Rihab as the lady who offers free accommodation for Syrian female refugees, “just for the love of God,” as the landlady often told the girls who lived under her roof. “In the beginning, things seemed normal and Um-Rihab treated us well,” says Samar, “but then she collected our photos and copies of our documents, and claimed she was seeking funding from ‘charitable people’. Next, she began insinuating that I have a suitor, a rich man who would give me all I wanted. When I first refused, her attitude changed and she began to treat me badly. In the end, I had to accept.” 

How Does a “Marriage by Picture” Work?

The deal takes place on the matchmaker’s social media account, where she provides her name and phone number. The following steps are followed via texts or calls:

First step: the matchmaker asks the male postulant to choose a category, “single, divorced, or widowed.”

Second step: money is discussed.

Third step: The girls’ pictures are sent through Whatsapp, then erased immediately.

Fourth step: if an agreement is reached, a wedding date is set.

Marriage on Vacation

I sat down with Rihab, a 20-year-old who got married to a Saudi national, who then divorced her by phone. She realized the groom only wanted her for the duration of his holiday. She had fallen victim to a so-called “misyar marriage.” According to Islam Web, misyar is a type of marriage contract where the husband and wife are able to renounce some marital rights such as living together, the wife’s rights to housing and maintenance money and the husband’s right to homekeeping and access, the later usually relinquished in order to keep the marriage secret from his first wife and children. Unlike the marriage of mut’ah (pleasure,) misyar  has no time limit. If it does, the contract is actually considered null. 

In Asenuret neighborhood in Istanbul, Rihab says her matchmaker had asked her to keep the union a secret. “I wanted to get married and leave the girls’ residence. He stayed with me for only one week. We kept in touch for another month, after which he asked me to hand over the apartment to the landlord. He had only rented it for one month. Then he divorced me on the phone, said I was now free, and he had fulfilled all his financial obligations.” But Rihab did not receive any dowry, and the jewelry he gifted her turned out to be fake and worthless. She called the matchmaker to inquire: “Um-Hussein said she did not owe me anything, and the only thing she could do is find me another husband, also in secrecy. It was then obvious that the lady was marrying off girls and pocketing their dowry in addition to her fees. After that, she again offers them free residence, on the condition that they undergo hymen reconstruction surgery, so that she offers them up for marriage again as virgins. I refused to do that.” 

When I contacted Um-Rihab,  the matchmaker, she denied the whole story, and insisted on knowing the name of the girl in question, which of course, I could not reveal, to protect Rihab.  

A Journey In Search of a “Bride”

It does not take advanced research skills to get in touch with a matchmaker. Do a google search and you will find a large number of them operating on social media platforms where they post statistics of the promised  brides, including their age, height, weight, hair and eye color.

To know more about the nature of their job, I contacted Um-Qusai, another matchmaker in Istanbul, on WhatsApp, and posed as a postulant who is looking for a Syrian girl to marry. Um-Qusai gave me her offers in detail: “A virgin would cost you between $7,000 and $10,000, in addition to the jewelry, which would be part of “personal clothing.” Divorcées and widows range from $3,000 to $6,000.” What about her fees, I asked? “Brother,” she said, “I charge $1000. If that is okay with you, then I’ll immediately send you some pictures of what I have.” 

She sent me pictures of many girls, insisted the union ceremony be officiated by an imam or sheikh, not in court. Dowry and commission are to be paid ahead of the wedding. 

Ali has a friend in the Gulf who was seeking a wife and ended up falling for the matchmakers’ scheme. Ali was there and has seen it all: “Their network is not centralized. After the groom agrees to their terms and conditions, all those who helped him get married disappear on wedding night. They disconnect cell phones and abandon their apartments without leaving a trace.” 

A man hailing from a Gulf state is considered a catch. I perused many Whatsapp messages sent to Saudi men advertising Syrian girls in Turkey who “want to get married. All you need do is transfer money to the bride you choose to help her get ready. Then come and consummate the marriage in Turkey.” 

For years, Saudi authorities have been aware of this scheme. In 2016, the Saudi embassy in Istanbul issued a warning for its nationals to beware “suspects using fake documents and Syrian IDs in the Turkish cities near the Syrian border, who have been luring in marriage-seeking citizens, through ads on social media platforms. The citizens then come to Turkey only to realize they have been victims of swindling and fraud.” 

Defrauding Arabs and Turks

Sherif (30), an Egyptian citizen living in Istanbul, also has a similar story. The girl he was offered to marry turned out to be already married, so he lost both the mahr and other expenses, totalling $10,000. The “wife” escaped the next morning, after stealing his belongings. She took the marriage contract with her, as well. Sherif had no means to prove he was robbed. There was no evidence of fraud, because he neither knew the witnesses nor the sheikh who wrote the contract. The only thing remaining is the Whatsapp messages, but the number no longer exists, and it was never officially registered.  

These criminal rings  do not spare Turkish citizens either. Last month, Turkish media platforms were buzzing with the news of the arrest of a “Syrian gang ” in Kayseri Province, after security forces received a complaint that they “defrauded a 51-year-old Turkish man of 40,000 liras to marry a 20-year-old Syrian girl, who took the money and disappeared.” The ring consisted of the girl, her 41-year-old father, and her 29-year-old aunt. Interrogated in Hatay Province in the south, they confessed they had “committed the same scheme in 5 other Turkish cities, and earned more than 2 million liras”.

• Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code states the following:

1- Fraud is punishable by up to three years in prison. 

2- Foreign claimants must deposit 10% of the amount mentioned in the case. 

Source: The attorney, Majd Al-Tabba’

Girls in the Network

Deceit runs in both directions. There are internet matchmaking gangs who specifically prey on young Syrian men. The brides-to-be are gang members themselves. 

Searching for his dream girl, Muhammad (28) from Deir ez-Zur, ended up losing $8,000 to a gang. That money was all he had. “Suddenly everything was gone,” he says. 

It all started last year when Mohammad asked a matchmaker to find him a bride in return for a commission. When the bride was ready, Mohammad went to meet her. She was with her brother, matchmaker himself, and a local sheikh who came to wed the pair. After the wedding, the bride asked him to take her to an outdoor restaurant. 15 minutes into dinner, she went to the restrooms and that was the last time he saw her. She disappeared and her cell phone number was immediately disconnected.  

Forged Documents & Other Creative Methods

The matchmakers’ stratagems vary from one case to another. Some, for example, especially defraud old Arab men living in Istanbul, as Majd al-Tabba’ points out: “These are not simple fraud cases. These are organized mafia rings consisting of men and women with forged documents and fake IDs. And they change their plans according to the targeted victim.” Al-Tabba’ took up a case where a matchmaker, Um-Mohammad, conned $20, 000 out of a 54-year-old Saudi man, via a Facebook ad offering him a chance to have a second wife: “All the documents we checked, passports, IDs and lease contracts, were fake, and cell phone numbers were unregistered, which left the case pending the identification of the perpetrators.” 

Solutions

According to Fatima Abdul-Aziz, in order to curb this phenomenon “refugees should form communities in their asylum countries, to get to know each other and communicate. It is also important to hold awareness-raising seminars to educate women about their marriage and divorce rights, in order to prevent them from being exploited.” 

In the meanwhile, Samar and Rihab are working in a tailor shop. Marriage is now the last item on their priority lists. They doubt they will ever get married again. And al-Tabba’s 54-year-old client is still awaiting the Turkish court’s decision on his case. 

Published on DARAJ.

The Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ)

The post Marriage by Picture: Matchmakers Preying on Syrian Refugee Girls in Turkey appeared first on SIRAJ.

Two kilometers of the Turkish-Syrian border, Yusuf entered into an old house located at Reyhanlı suburbs – south of Turkey, opened carefully a brown big canvas bag and take out slowly a heavy stone inside it to avoid breaking it.

When he lifts the stone, I saw a human portrait was carved carefully on a white stone, with big eyes, beard and curly hair’s head.

After the man removed the bag fully, an athletic naked body was appeared of pure marble, standing leaning on a column covered with the skin of a dead lion.

“What a beautiful statue!” Yusuf said with a smile while staring on it, it is from Syria with a half meter height, made of greenish stone, “it will change my life and make me a rich person “as Yusuf said to the investigator.

That just has entered from Syria by Yusuf , hoping to make him rich , this is what motivate us to search more against the backgrounds of transferring, smuggling of Syrian archaeology and selling it, especially after spread of excavation & illegal trade inside the country, and Crossing borders to neighboring countries, which has accompanied the war-years since 8 years, thus the Syrian bleeding was not limited to immigration of millions people from the country but exceeded it to smuggling stones (archaeology).

The smuggled archeology trading networks are getting benefit by selling ,purchasing  and smuggling it to the neighboring countries, which include multiple parties of normal citizens, brokers & traders , who were founded by a virtual environment-Social Media for trading of such goods by advertising and selling it.

Four months of tracking, a team of journalists in this investigation has detected the way of merchandising the Syrian smuggled archaeology by using Social Media to create a demand on such goods, as Yusuf did, and to support selling operations, where you can find who sells the archaeology pieces and who interested of purchasing it.

And you can find details of the exhibited pieces, price list, delivery method and others, and what led us to achieve this investigation to know how they are trafficking of such archaeology? Who buy them? Where can you find their last place?

No official statistics for the amount of smuggled & stole Syrian archaeology in the last few years, or which crossed the border by smugglers, mediators and border’ traders, the international “UNICCO” organization’s estimates are considered the illegal trading of the cultural properties from Syria & Iraq are one of the main income resources for organized crime (its income estimated between 7 & 15 billion dollar yearly).

On 13 February 2019, the Turkish police announced seizure of four – “priceless” old books, were written by the Syriac & Aramiac language included a book depicts the life of Jesus Christ, and the police think the books may were smuggled from Syria museums, but after examining the books later has showed no stamps on it refer to its registration, and some parts of the books were torn, that mean it was containing museum archive’s numbers which was stolen from.

Before that /168/ of Syrian smuggled archaeology pieces were seizure by the authorities, dating back to Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman era at Gaziantep province.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a warning in 2015 against the background of growth the Syrian archaeology trading due to the conflict, and referred that Syrian stolen archaeology are sold in the European black markets.

Thus an alternatives were found, most of selling archaeology & antiques’ transactions are currently done by limited networks or by Social Media including Facebook, instant messaging by using WhatsApp and Telegram apps.

eBay website is showing pictures for Syrian originally antiques with different prices, and by technology the network reaches to potential purchasers with more security and anonymity, what is proven by this investigation.

“The most famous areas for smuggling the archaeology to the neighboring countries & world are the big archaeological areas, like Palmyra city (2100 B.C), Afamia city – Hama countryside (300 B.C).Forgotten Cities in Idleb like: Sergila, Bara and citadel of Samaan which it’s dating back to Byzantine era.” According to Ex-Director of Archeology and Museums in Al-raqqa city, Prof. Anas Al-khabour, who worked in Alraqqa city between2003-2008 and living in Sweden currently, professor in Gothenburg University, Specialist in the cultural threatened heritage in conflicts areas like Syria & Iraq.

Where do the archaeologies come from?

Yusuf -35 years old, with a big body & light beard on his corny face, was exhibiting some archeological pieces like: Golden currencies & Romanian glass bottles on his “Facebook” page, with fake name.

The investigator communicated with him and asked to meet, he thought we are traders want  to buy what he have for the first time , then we had introduced our self as journalists, after a while, he accepted to meet us at café in Antioch border city with Syria.

The young man who is trading in selling of small archaeological pieces like: Romanian coins currencies or gold ornaments, adding to glass – manufactured bottles was hiding in close apartment a statue to “Hercules” got it out of Palmyra city, after he had found it with his cousin at one of the farms in the archaeological area.

“Hercules” is famous as a hero with a super power, and he is son of the famous Greek goddess “Zeus” which represents as an iconic of western arts, literature & popular culture at the Greece and the Romans, and his existence in Palmyra city not a coincidence because of the city dating back to Greece & Romanian era and it is an extension of it in year of 282 AD.

“When I stared at the clay covered- statue for the first time, I thought that I will become a rich, so I exhibited it to traders, but I was chocked because they didn’t pay me the required sum” as Yusuf says.

Yusuf wants against the statue an amount for/ $100.000/ one hundred thousand dollars (equals to 55 Fifty–Five million Syrian pounds), He explains in a faint voice after he lit a cigarette and said “In Syria the traders exploit us”.

The international UNESCO organization is estimates the volume of this trade between Syria, Iraq & the world to 7 -15 billion dollars.

The most profit works

The sculptures , statues, miniatures , cuneiform tablets, clay / pottery boards, currencies and old Mosaic panels, which dating back to previous civilizations lived in Syrian lands since thousands years are the most important things for this trade ,shown by social media pages , and what are revealed by the brokers & traders who were met by the investigator.

Persons & networks ensure transferring collectibles by smuggling it to neighboring countries then selling it to third parties or keeping it until obtaining the required price which estimates of thousands dollars.

At the border area, Syrian pieces dating back to an old civilizations & kingdoms alongside Euphrates River are offered to sale, it is one of the oldest world civilizations, like: Mary’s Archaeological City which flourished in the third millennium B.C, Dura Europos (300 B.C) and Syrian coast areas like Ugarit (6000 B.C).

“Most of the smuggled archaeology is come from areas outside the control of Syrian regime, where archaeology excavation’s operation & looting of archaeological sites were done” According to Al-khabour’s survey.

He clarifies that” The excavation operations are going in advance – known sites, where the archaeological missions had worked in, in addition to undiscovered sites like Archaeological hills, and there are also many public markets for stolen archaeology inside Syria”.

Ghawzangh Shu, Implementation and Facilitation Director in the world customs organization (WCO) said at Paris International Conference of 2014, which is discussing” the Heritage and cultural diversity’s that both are endangered in Iraq & Syria”, “Looting the cultural properties is one of the oldest organized crimes across the border, and today became widespread phenomenon all over the world, smuggling the cultural heritage still forms a catastrophe hits the countries’ heritage across the world.

Yearly, thousands of ِArchaeological pieces disappear from the museums ,churches, private groups and public  foundations, starting from old weapons down to the paintings, currencies, watches, religious antiques, archaeological pieces and  cultural heritage , all of them exposed to steal”.

“Most of the smuggled archaeology is come from areas outside the control of Syrian regime, where archeology excavation’s operation & looting of archaeological sites were done”.

“The clear relation between this kind of crime, tax evasion & money laundry has confirmed, and no one can estimate the profits from the looted, stole or smuggled artworks reliably, but experts agree that it represents one of the largest illegal world companies which value reaches to billion dollars and that seduces the organized crime” , according to Shu.    

Marketing the looted pieces

To become a rich person is aim of every person working in this trade and isn’t enough finding the archaeological pieces after illegal excavation, but there is also selling or transferring it outside Syrian- border, what exactly Yusuf did when he had found Hercules statue.”We had communicated with a smuggler in Idleb, then we entered the statue on a donkey back, because it is heavy I can’t run while I am lifting It.” as the man explained us the operation.

Yusuf described us this operation inside the house we have met, indicating from the room mountain -view’s window to a mountain road which you can see it directly by eyes through the window” from over there I entered, I paid one thousand dollars (equals to 550 thousand Syrian pounds) for a smuggler”.

The Statue’s trip

Yusuf moved the statue from Palmyra city to Raqqa by a car at the beginning of 2107, the city was then under “Isis” organization’s control.

Then he moved the statue by a car to Al-bab city – northern Aleppo countryside, which it was under Isis control also then moved later to Idleb which was under Factions of the Free Army’ control, finally settled down in Harem city at Syrian –Turkish border.

This transferring operation indicates to Isis’ control on the Syrian cities, which is facilitated the excavation operations & archaeology’s illegal trade from the transferring operation down to ability of offer & sale it.

“Isis’ organization was giving excavation permissions by Alrekkaz /Ore Office – the responsible of what are under the land from oil or archaeology, against of taking 20% of the found pieces’ value” as Yusf says.

According to Al Khabour, Yusuf and others who we have met in this investigation, thus the archaeology markets are outside Syria border at the neighboring countries such as: Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq & Jordan.

Gulf’s big Traders

Archaeology traders are communicating with each other usually at south of Turkey by communication apps & instant conversations through internet network, thus they are following-up the archaeology smuggling operations which include: Archaeological stone pieces, gold & metal pieces.

Isaac and Juma are “small” Syrian traders as they are saying, because they think that “there are rankings for trade, starting from the archaeological pieces’ owner then the brokers’ role down to the “whale”- the man who buys everything”.

The situation in Syria motivated the illegal archaeology’s trade, and the local people started to excavate for antiques & treasures due to lacking of resources & poverty, as happened with Juma & Isaac who are getting benefit from social media and the development of technology in the selling, buying, demand and offer.

Issac asserts that social media made the work much easier, he doesn’t need any more to travel from Gaziantep to Şanlıurfa  – the border cities with Syria for instance.

To see the archaeological entered pieces from Syria, he only asks the piece’s owner to photograph, write his name and the date beside the archaeological piece, to make sure of its authenticity & existence, he informs who need it, after that will be examined by an experts, and finally the purchasing operation will be done.

“The archaeological pieces are sold a lot to Arabian Gulf merchants who buy archaeology & gold, paying big sums which sometime exceed to million dollars, and they are using transfers at the black markets to prevent detection the big transferred sums.” as Issac says.

Issac allowed us going with him to know his handling way with other traders, so we went to his friend Juma house beside Turkish Gaziantep city.

Juma prefers to come at night “it is more safety” and he clarified that by a phone call to Isaac “To avoid any trouble” upon his opinion.

Juma opened the door, due to issac’s loud voice calling him.

Juma-30 years old, with a pale brown face & slim body sounds very afraid of working in such field, “If his order were revealed, he will spend the rest of his life in prisons”, as he says.

At his poor house, he saying “we are talking with you due to existing many big mafias who steal the sculptures & massive archaeology, but for us as poor people we are working in simple things just to live in this country, where everything is few for us”.

Directly the talk about Juma’s archaeological pieces began between Isaac & juma for their prices, quantity, where are the rest of the pieces? And where they are come from? , He informed him all the details.

Juma has Romanian metal currencies, the value of each piece for $300-500 (equals to 165 – 275 thousands Syrian pound), the total of them /150/ metal pieces still in Syria,” all of them found during excavation at north of Manbig city, and to bring them to Turkey are very easy in case of paying a good sum” as he says.

A Popular trade

Omar Glick, the Turkish Minister of Culture & Tourism talked about his ministry’s policy to prevent entering the Syrian cultural heritage to Turkey.

And he talked about the big development in smuggling of the Syrian cultural things across the Turkish border since beginning of the Syrian war in 2011, but the government is seeking to limit the smuggling operations across its border and inside its lands.

According to Turkish act No.2863of 1973, to transfer or smuggle archaeology are punished by aggravated imprisonment & seizure, lately were arrested smugglers & Syrian archaeology’s traders, according to News agencies & Turkish media.

Is this archaeology real?

We tried to make sure of Yusuf’s statue authenticity, and the truth of other archaeological Collectibles’ pictures, thus we sent the statue’s picture after their permission to Stefan Lund -Swedish archaeologist, specialist Prof. in Middle East archaeology – Gothenburg University &   Sweden international researches center.

Prof. asserted the statue’s authenticity, and it is a priceless statue in Europe and costs a lot of money, and he says “It is Hercules statue with distinguished lion skin dating back to the Greek- Hellenistic era”.

Prof. Lund’s asserts of the statue’s authenticity & importance are repeated by another archaeologist, who was working as a previous head of an archaeological mission in Syria before 2011, and right now is working as a Prof. in the Middle East archaeology’s Department -European university, refused mentioning his name for legal reasons relate in his work And to prevent him from appraising the archaeology at the black market.

We showed him the statue & other archaeological pieces’ pictures from social media and black market in Turkey, they are (Boy head, Hercules marble statue, two small marble statues and all of them dating back to Hellenistic – Greek era), his answer by E-mail on 19 last March to the investigator was:” clearly some of the pieces from Palmyra city, of the art style side, and some contain Aramaic inscriptions can be identified easily, thus no doubt of its origin from Palmyra and Roman era”.

According to Prof. these archaeological pieces are:” popular to some extent in eastern Mediterranean Regions ,including Syria and mosaic paintings dating back to Hellenistic-Greek era can be found in the rich excavated private houses  in eastern Mediterranean , and the pieces are authentic certainly”.

Transit Countries

“Turkey & Syria’s neighbors are “Transit” countries, because the last market for this archaeology is Europe, where they are sold in auctions or in the old arts antiques shops”.

According to Al-khabour, who has a deep knowledge in Syria’s archaeological heritage and cooperated UNESCO organization in Syrian archaeology protection matter.

He says:”London market is an attractive for these archaeological pieces, especially the smuggled one”, adding:”in the European market there are big demand for archaeology, and this place is the best market for selling these pieces with big sums”.

These archaeological pieces are ” popular to some extent in eastern Mediterranean Regions ,including Syria and mosaic paintings dating back to Hellenistic-Greek era can be found in the rich excavated private houses  in eastern Mediterranean , and the pieces are authentic certainly”.

Forging certificates of Origin

We tried to search & make sure of Khabour’s words, if these markets are attractive for smuggled & looted Syrian pieces or whether they are the last place for them.

Communicating with smugglers, brokers or even who work in this field is very difficult, due its danger, where our both attempts with two merchants failed after we had communicated them by “social media”, then we tried again with one of the merchants & brokers in Europe and no one accepted to talk even.

Georgin 50 – years old is trading of both Chinese & Egyptian archaeological pieces, living in Germany – France from Denmark originally.

We talked with him as an archaeological pieces’ owners who have archaeological pieces for sale not as journalists, thus he accepted to meet us after he had asked for pictures.

He met us in his car at one of the European capitals “what is the archaeological showed piece for sale?”He asked directly after our arrival, so I gave him Hercules statue picture.

While he was staring at statue’s pictures put his eye glasses on and asked” Are there any documents for the statue?”,”No” We answered , then he asked “Does it exist in Europe?

“No” I answered, “it is in Turkey “, and He said “We will talk if the statue arrives to Europe”.

The intended documents by Georgin’s question are like a passport known as “certificate of origin” should be available with any sold & traded piece legally.

Because maybe the statue was at one of the art pieces auctions, and there are documents for the statue’s buying -selling before, or was owned by known family in the world and have old pictures for the statue in their houses.

He explained for us the necessity of the smuggled archaeological pieces’ documents to trade it legally, by forging their related origin certificates, thus they become ready for legal trading, then to show them in The International Auctions Houses for sale with fancy prices.

This is one of the methods which the looted Syrian archaeological antiques-finds find their way to the international markets, auctions and show houses across the world and avoiding the seizure & governmental control.

“It is an organized old networks flourished in Iraq since 2003, during American invasion then in Syria after the occurred problems”. As Khabour commented on the above mentioned merchant’s words.

Supply market to Europe

The main information’s memo – Annex No.6, issued from UNESCO in 2014 – “Preservation of heritage and cultural diversity is a humanitarian and security necessity in the light of the conflicts of the twenty-first century”, which indicates to:” the smuggling feeds the illegal trade’s system of the cultural properties, one of the main incomes for the organized crime (estimates between 7 -15 billion dollars yearly).

The trade methods exceed the neighboring countries like Lebanon, Turkey & United Arab Emirates to supply the art pieces’ markets in the United Kingdom, Switzerland & United State of America between other markets.

It is a global scourge that can only be combated at the international level, by cooperate of the governmental agencies like: Customs & Police Departments and the interested parties in art market, including auctions houses, museums and amateur of archaeological things collecting”.

The red –list & Interpol

Some of the European states are trying to enact new laws to limit the looted archaeology trading of the in conflicts- states like Syria, due to the link of this file with financing terrorism and extremist groups such as “Isis” organization for instance.

These efforts come right now after in the past were allowed to sell archaeological pieces which had reached to Europe, according to Khabour.

This situation has been continued until 2016, where the Germany government initiated to limit this trade through providing that submitting an identification document with each piece or proof that it belongs to an important persons, and then will be allowed to sell or show it.

Each piece doesn’t accomplish these conditions will be considered smuggled & from illegal source, as khabour indicated.

There are other efforts are leading by organizations like International Council of Museums “ICOM” that responsible of the world museums.

The investigator communicated with the museum administration in order to know the shapes & pictures of the looted smuggled Syrian archaeology.

Some of the European states are trying to enact new laws to limit the looted archaeology trading of the in conflicts- states like Syria, due to the link of this file with financing terrorism and extremist groups such as “Isis” organization for instance.

The administration asserted that a guide under title of “Red emergency list of the threatened Syrian cultural properties” that issued, printed in 2013 & distributed to the international police “Interpol in order to identify the Syrian archaeological pieces, to help art professionals, heritage specialists & law enforcement officials to identify the looted Syrian archaeological pieces which be traded in the International Art Market”.

The guide contains pictures & shapes of archaeological pieces and chronology in order to identify them, intercept and confiscate them providing that delivering them to the country of origin, and these pieces should be registered & numbered at the country of origin, and information’s intersection with Interpol to facilitate the process of intercepting, controlling and to limit trading of them.

“UNESCO” role as an international organization to document, preserve the material & cultural heritage for peoples, but it refused to communicate with us despite of sending questions by e-mail to its office on last 25 March without any respond, thus “UNESCO ” role limited on activities which concentrate on accomplishing harmony between the initiatives and multi solutions regarding archaeology trading as Khabour describes it.

Yusuf impatiently waiting who buy Hercules statue and don’t care if the statue has later an authentic or forged certificate of origin, but only cares of selling it with good price and he says who buy the statue should transfer it in any way they want, clarifying that: ” a German man was paid $55 thousand dollars for the statue, but I did not sell”, according to him.

Adding,”I will keep the statue with me until obtaining of the best price”.

Yusuf returned back Hercules statue to the canvas bag, tied it tightly by a metal tape, holding it as baby between his arms and left the room saying with a shy smile while staring to the bag:”Hercules, you will not see the sun until a well-paid customer comes and appreciates your value”.

The post Syria: “Stones Smuggling” appeared first on SIRAJ.

Inside the maternity ward of the public “Dugum” hospital in Gaziantep, Turkey, the Syrian refugee Nour Shabaan, aged 17, lies in a bed for pregnant women, getting ready to give birth to her baby.

The parents are overjoyed at the coming baby, perhaps it will make them forget the bitterness of displacement and moving away from their homeland since they settled in the Turkish town of Gaziantep 3 years ago fleeing the horrors of the Syrian war.

Nour delivers the baby, and things go smoothly but then the hospital refuses to give the baby to the parents on the pretext that the mother’s refugee ID has a wrong age, because she was married under the legal age of marriage (18 years). The hospital decided to keep the baby, and refer the mother to trial at once.

When Nour delivered the baby, she was 17 years old. When she got married, she was 16. In both cases, she was violating the Family Law provisions on marriage, that bans the marriage of girls under 18. This violation is described by the law as “a crime of sexual exploitation”, punishable by prison terms ranging between 8 and 15 years, according to Articles 103-105 of the Turkish Penal Code.

Although the law banning marriage of children in Turkey applies also to other foreigners living in the country, including Syrian refugees, the lack of knowledge about it, and lack of awareness about the consequences of early marriage (beside the lack of NGOs and societal oversight) led to the spread of these early marriages among the Syrian community.

The World Health Organisation estimates that there are 16 million girls around the world between 15 and 19 years old, and one million girls under 15, who give birth each year.

According to World Bank statistics for 2017, the rate of pregnancy of girls between 15 and 19 years old in Syria is around 39 cases in each 1,000 girl.

Nour is one of a great number of Syrian refugees who live in Turkey as refugees and who got married under 18 either on Turkish soil or in Syria, and then entered Turkey refugees after their marriage or having given birth in hospitals under the legal age of marriage.

According to Haydar Houri, a specialist lawyer, without being aware of the consequences of underage marriage, the fathers of the girls encourage their marriage to older men (over 18) and become legally accountable after managing the marriage. This issue is spreading throughout Turkey.

The law classifies a minor as anyone under the age of 18, according to Ghazwan Qoronful, head of the Syrian Lawyers Collective in Turkey (a group of Syrian lawyers who provide legal aid to refugees in courts of law). He adds that under the Syrian Personal Status Law, Article 85, a minor does not reach the age of eligibility until they reach 18.

According to law number 5395, covering children in Turkey, a minor is considered to be anyone below the age of 18, added Qoronful.

While early marriage is defined as the marriage of a person under the age of 18 year, according to Qoronful “This marriage in the eyes of the Turkish law is not marriage. It is categorized as sexual assault against a minor.”

The consequences of this “assault” is usually to refer such cases (usually captured at hospitals during delivery or when a girl is discovered as pregnant and her age turns out to be under 18) to the public prosecution office, that in turn moves the case on to the courts. The husband and girl’s parent are arrested. Sometimes, the girl herself is arrested, and they all are turned over to the court, according to Qoronful.

DNA test for the child

Gaziantep’s hospital decided to let Nour go, after she recovered from the delivery. The baby stayed at the hospital. The hospital ordered a DNA test to confirm his identity as to whether he’s indeed her son, and the mother found herself in another pitfall.

Nour confessed to the investigator that she forged her age and real name. She said, “for this case, I used the help of a Syrian lawyer to oversee the test procedures, and for taking a blood sample from the baby for the test. The lawyer wasn’t able to help, however. So I hired a Turkish lawyer. Now, I am waiting for the results, to see if they will allow me to take the baby home. They allow me to see him, however. I go see him every 3 days, because the hospital is away from where I live. It is a long distance that I cannot commute through daily.”

Nour’s baby came to the world 2 months and 5 days before I interviewed her on 25 January 2019. Since then, nothing has changed. She is still waiting for the DNA test’s results, and is waiting for the baby to come home. But she’s “optimistic”, and waits for the day the baby will return to her.

In case he doesn’t return, she said, the lawyer told her he will file a case against the hospital. This is what gives her hope and keeps her going.

“I know a girl who had been through this before me. She delivered her baby 7 months ago, and the tests results showed up few days back”, said Nour, “So now she can take the baby from the hospital.”

The test done through the Ministry of Health’s budget was a relief for the mother, since she didn’t have to pay for it. The lawyer’s fees, however, reached 7,000 Turkish Liras ($1200). The family had to go into debt because they didn’t have even one single Lira to start with, according to Nour.

A love story

Nour regrets forging her name and age. But her motive for this was being afraid of having her real age discovered, because she did this in order to marry her cousin (20 years old), after a love story, she claims. She lives with her in-laws now, while her parents and siblings live in Adana, southern Turkey.

“I am sad because my child is not with me, but what can I do. God willing, in a few days he will return to me. They care for the babies at hospital. Every time I go visit I see he’s clean and well-fed”, Nour said, “I couldn’t breastfeed him because right after delivering the baby I had to go to court each day, and I wasn’t able at that time to go visit the hospital as well to breastfeed him.”

“At the hospital, they said that my boy looks like me. But they need a legal proof. I feel so sad because I couldn’t breastfeed him. I begged the hospital to let me do that, but each time they deny my request.”

At the court

Marwa Alyoussef is 17 years old. She has been married to her cousin, who works as a tailor, for two years now, since she was 15 years old. Her story is not so different from Nour’s, but she endured different kinds of suffering that were reflected on her life in Turkey as the country she fled to from Syria.

Marwa who came from the famous al-Midan neighborhood, Damascus, didn’t notarize her marriage (that was conducted in Syria) at the Turkish authorities. Therefore, she lacks reliable documentation about her social status in Turkish governmental records. She had a baby from her marriage. The baby is now one year old.

Marwa said, “I delivered the baby at the Bagajlar public hospital in Istanbul. I wasn’t interrogated or asked any questions during the delivery. However, one year after the delivery, the police came and asked me to go visit the station. I went, and they held an investigation for me. They reviewed my documentation, and gave me a date to go visit the court, 4 months later.”

When Marwa entered the courtroom at Karakoy, Istanbul, after referral from the police, she found a translator, a psychiatrist, a judge, and a public writer. She said, “They asked me so many questions about my personal life. Questions like, ‘do you regret your marriage? Do you love your husband? Did someone coerce you into getting married? Do you currently have a job?’. These were important questions for them because they do not allow married women my age to work outside the household. They also asked me to refrain from pregnancy for 3 years.”

Until now, Marwa doesn’t know what she did wrong, because “marriage at that young age is so widespread in Syria, not only within my family. I married before I come to Turkey. I have papers to prove it. There is nothing wrong with me getting married”, Marwa said.

According to her, she knows about “so many marriages of girls at 12 and 13 years old. I mean once the girl reaches puberty she would get married, nothing is wrong with that”.

“I have many friends with the same issue. They can face imprisonment. They went to court many times, because they get a ruling of being innocent from accusations against them. They also paid lots of money, reaching 20,000 Liras ($3660) in some cases, and as low as 5,000 Liras ($915) in other cases, as fees for lawyers, commute, and other costs related to the court.”

Meanwhile, she also fears the repercussions on her husband if the authorities discover their early marriage and how they had a baby while they were both minors, under the age of marriage. She waits for the next court hearing in late April 2019.

She said, “I am afraid that they might take my husband. I love him so much. In case the court decides to put him in prison, we might go back to Syria, although he was summoned there for military conscription.”

Marriage in Turkey

• Marriage in Turkey is civil marriage. Turkish family law organizes marriage, and its provisions do not rely on religions [sic].
• Age of marriage: 18 years old.
• Exceptions from the age limit:
  • Persons at 17, with the consent of parents.
  • Persons at 16, after consent from the judge at family court.
  • People with special needs who are 18 or older, can get married after consent from the family court’s judge, based on medical reports about their capacity to get married.
• No polygamy in Turkey.
• Any marriage concluded outside municipalities’ marriage offices is not legal.

Source for the infographics: Syrian lawyer Haydar Houri

A widespread phenomenon

The phenomenon of early marriage among minor Syrian girls in Turkey, and in other countries of destination for Syrian refugees, is like a snowball that keeps rolling and getting bigger. It persists in the absence of awareness about the risks and dangers, and in spite of the grave psychological problems it produces for the family (parents and children alike). This phenomenon has become well known from the media focus directed at it, in order to help spread awareness about it, and to try and find a solution that might help control this phenomenon.

In an investigation report by ‘Al-Arabi Al-Jadid’ entitled “Underage mothers in Turkey” on 15 March 2018, it was pointed out that the reception at one hospital, during the first five months of last year, had visits from 115 pregnant children. Police were not notified about them. They included 39 Syrians, and the rest were Turkish. Among the 115 cases, 38 were minors under 15 years old.

This is what led the Turkish authorities to open two separate investigations. The first is related to public servants accused of negligence. The second is related to the exploitation of children.

Public Prosecution managed to investigate the cases of 20 of the accused, and to conduct investigations related to 50 minors, in the presence of a psychiatrist. Investigations had shown that all pregnant minors live in neighborhoods and municipalities of Istanbul with high population concentration of people who moved there from Eastern and South Eastern Turkey.

In the same context, in Sweden, the country that received around 110 thousand Syrian refugees, representing the second biggest migrant group in the country,132 minor refugees were married to adults according to UNHCR’s statistics until 2016, although the numbers didn’t specify their gender. This has led the Swedish Tax Authority to strengthen the rules of evaluating and registering child-marriage cases, even if other authorities allowed such marriages.

In Germany, which hosts 699,000 Syrians, representing the third biggest migrant group in the country, the Federal Statistics Office in 2018, and the Federal Ministry of Homeland Security, estimated that 1,475 minors registered as married, including 361 girls under 14. This led the Ministry of Justice to introduce a bill, by which the German government will not recognize marriages documented through foreign marriage certificates, in case one of the couple is under 18.

Birth, but under conditions

When Israa Muhammad (15 years) decided to go to the public hospital in Kilis, Turkey to give birth to her first child, the hospital denied her entry. She decided to go to a private hospital, but she didn’t make it through the door there either.

“The doctor shouted at me, saying you are young, and the child is small”, said Israa, “I cannot take responsibility in case one of you dies, which is very probable.”

She added, “At that time, I was in great pain, giving birth, and the baby was almost fully born. We didn’t know where to go, but God put in our way a legal midwife, who agreed to do the operation. She said she will do it on condition that she will not be held responsible if something happened to me or the baby. We could only accept, because we didn’t have any other options.”

Dr. Sawat Irchahin, the head gynecologist at Medical Park in Istanbul, said, “Early marriage has a negative influence on the health of mother and child. Symptoms appear early in the pregnancy, with nonstop vomiting, anemia, as well as the possibility of miscarriage and early births. This is because of female hormones at this early age, or because the uterus is not ready yet for pregnancy. This leads to spasms that might lead to hemorrhage, and thus early births happen. The young girl can also suffer high blood pressure, leading to kidney failure, internal hemorrhage, spams, and the need for cesarean operations become more likely.”

The doctor confirmed that early pregnancy “increases the likelihood of suffering bone deformations in the pelvic area and the spine. It can also negatively affect the embryo’s health. The embryo can suffocate inside the mother because of a likely severe shortage in the blood circulation feeding him.”

Early birth can also lead to a shortage in the respiratory functions, because the embryo can be born without fully formed lungs. The child can suffer problems in the digestive system, and a delay in physical and mental growth. The child can also suffer brain paralysis or hearing impairments, according to Dr. Irchahin.

Getting pregnant once again

The pain and suffering Israa had been through didn’t stop her from getting pregnant one more time. She didn’t think about how her early marriage would  be discovered when she went to the hospital to give birth to her second child. At the time, she was 16 years old.

“When I was pregnant with my second child, I went to the Kamil public hospital,” said Israa. “There, they had to receive me, because the baby’s head had already emerged. They quickly put me in the delivery room. After the baby was born, they registered my personal data, and soon enough the police came to interrogate me. They kept me at the hospital for 12 days.”

During that period, her daughter was inside an incubator in the hospital. The mother went through investigations and interrogations. They took her fingerprints, and in the end allowed her to leave the hospital with her baby girl.

She said, “I felt I was a prisoner released. I told myself I will not get pregnant again until I am 20.”

How the prosecution proceeds

• The case starts during child birth, or during consulting the doctors while monitoring births in public hospitals and clinics.
• Police are notified by the doctor, because failing to inform the police is considered a crime.
• The Supreme Criminal Court in Turkey manages these cases, because the penalty is over 5 years of imprisonment.
• Penalties, based on the judge’s discretion can reach 10 years in prison, according to the Turkish Penal Code.
• The case starts without the need for someone filing it.
• The case is referred to prosecution, that demands verdicts against the husband and the minor’s parent.

 Source: Haydar Houri, Syrian lawyer.

The Social-media’s market

Some groups and pages specialized in matters related to women and girls on social media provide a forum for discussions about child marriage and refugee affairs in host communities in general. Some of these pages also provide information for arranging marriages.

A woman for example would say she needs a wife for her son or another relative, with specific demands, like her age, height, where she lives, etc, and proposals start coming her way.

This investigator witnessed several cases, where she contacted the people in question, but it is hard to expose their real names because the topic is sensitive. Samar (not her real name) says she got married at 14, and delivered her first baby at 15, at a private hospital in Istanbul. She didn’t go to a public hospital fearing the procedures. But she had to go to public healthcare facilities to vaccinate the child.

There, officials initiated an investigation into her about her marriage and when it happened. The police also interrogated her the next day.

Her father was arrested, and police searched for her husband, who is on the run until now, according to her post.

Social expert Adel Hanif Ughlu, who worked in 2012-2013 on documenting 11 child marriage cases of girls, including 9 cases ending in kidney failure, says, “Syrian families hide this affairs very well. Even those who have Turkish nationality have their daughters married while still minors, even though they know this is a crime under Turkish laws.”

Official statistics and numbers

* 405,521 Syrian children have been born in Turkey in up to November 2018.

Source: Minister of Interior, Süleyman Soylu, 22 February 2019.

* Urfa province in southern Turkey is among the provinces with highest occurrences of Syrian births.

* 400 Syrian children are born in Turkey each day.

* Urfa’s share of that number is 50 to 55 per day.

Source: Head of Migration Research Center, Muhammad Murad Erdogan, 25 October 2018.

* Over half a million Syrian children are born in Turkey and who are under 4 years, do not possess any nationality (stateless).

* Current number of those registered as deserving temporary protection is 3.5 million.

* The number of stateless newborns and children under 4 in Turkey is 535,826.

Source: Turkish Migration and Refuge Authority, and the Ombudsman office, 25 August 2018.

Endless psychological problems

Early marriage doesn’t leave its mark on the girl’s physical health only, but it also leads to deep psychological crises that become hard to get through with the passage of time, for the girl and for her children. Psychiatrist Omnia Turk says that this early marriage “denies the girl the kindness of her parents, and her right to choose a husband herself. It also means denying her living her full childhood. The girl doesn’t understand married life, or the responsibility on her shoulders, leading to huge pressures in some cases. Also, she suffers problems in her sexual life, because she doesn’t understand married or sexual life. This leads to breakdowns between the couple, and the inability to adjust with the problems of marriage.”

Another aspect negatively affecting the children, is that they do not understand that the mother herself is a minor, and “that leads to unsound and unwise decisions, because the minor doesn’t care for giving her children education. She didn’t acquire the ability to discipline or raise the children, let alone being denied herself the right to education, which negatively influences her and the children.”

She added, “When she grows up, the minor discovers that she married the wrong person, or not the person she wants to continue her life with. She discovers that she was used as if she was an object for sale.”

Early marriage in religion

Marriage cannot happen unless the couple are on equal terms. In Sharia, this equality is required. Here, Dr. Muhammad Nadir, a lecturer at Karabük University, Turkey, says, “If the girl marries a person who is not equal to her, without her consent, the marriage is considered null and void, according to most Ulama (experts in religious law).”

According to Dr. Nadir, “The couple being on an equal footing is an inherent right for the woman. She cannot be coerced into forfeiting that right. It is a condition for marriage, and marriage of minors is void of this quality. Sharia might grant the minor a separate/independent financial capacity, overseen by her parent, in her interest. Her money cannot be spent except in her interest. Interest in marriage is even more important than finances, because honor is more important than money.”

Solutions to the phenomenon

Faced with this reality and in the absence of sufficient solutions for the problematic phenomenon of early marriage in Turkey among the Syrians, and regardless of if that marriage was conducted in Syria or Turkey, the future of such marriages is vague. Against the strict Turkish Law, Nour and Marwa will keep waiting for the results of their prosecution, anxiously waiting for the influence on their future and lives. Here, the Syrian lawyer Haydar Houri recommends to avoid marriage before 18. This marriage, according to him, is problematic, because, “There are many cases of prosecution in Turkey.”

When the minor girl is discovered as being married, one of two methods is used. Either to refer her to a shelter for minors, or return her to her family home, and make the family promise not to send her ever again to the husband.

Houri, on the other hand, recommends that any person married to a minor girl in Turkey, should try to document his marriage in one way or another in Syria, to avoid penalty. This is because once the marriage is documented by Syrian Sharia courts, this documentation can be used in the prosecution to avoid penalizing the husband, because the act is a crime in his country.

*This investigation was conducted under supervision of the Syrian Investigative Reporting Unit – SIRAJ, within the context of “Syria In Depth” project, conducted in cooperation with the Guardian Foundation, with support from IMS. 

The post “Mothers before their time” appeared first on SIRAJ.

Before one year and a half, a local Turkish phone number called to the Syrian refugee, Jihad Rahal, the content of the calling was ambiguous for him, because he doesn’t know the Turkish language.

At the next day the same number called him again, with a ” weak” Arabic language, the caller told Jihad that he is an employer of the Immigration Department, and asked him to provide his documents for obtaining the Turkish nationality, at the first the young Syrian thought that it is just a”joke” from one of his friends .

At the next day Jihad went to the Immigration Department in Gaziantep city (southern of Turkey) to check it out, he asked employees who talking the Arabic language about the caller’s number and the content of demand , they asserted to him that the call is real and the phone number really belongs to the Immigration Department .

Jihad is a 28 years old youth, from Idlib countryside, holding a Syrian secondary school’s certificate, residing in Aleslahia camp, he says to the person who prepares the investigation, ” in spite of that I will lose the aid & housing at the camp, but surely I prefer obtaining the Turkish nationality to be able working legally or travel to another country for work, after I became a semi-prisoner here because I can’t move among Turkish cities, and if I left turkey I can’t return back “.

Jihad not the only one who nominates to obtain the Turkish nationality, the person who prepared this investigation has documented dozens of cases inside and outside the camp that really obtained the nationality and a lot of them do not have a university certificates, and this contradicts with the Turkish official narrative that the nationalization is targeting the Competencies Syrians only.

This reality makes the resident Syrian at Turkish lands in front of many questions, why they are nationalized? What the aim of that in the near and long term? How many persons of the Syrians were nationalized? And where is concentrated their biggest percentage? We are trying in this investigation answering of these questions and other during making interviews with the experts, politician and Syrians have obtained the Turkish nationality. “And others still waiting for their roles amid the absence of a clear & followed methodology, to choose the nominees, for the Turkish nationality from the resident Syrians in the Turkish lands”, as saying the experts and the persons who follow-up the matter.

For five months, the investigation detected providing documents of 360 Syrian for obtaining the Turkish nationality at Hatay state alone. And each of the Syrian governorates: Aleppo & Idlib which is taking the highest rates of nationalization, and the Turkish Gaziantep & Hatay governorates are occupied the first ranks among the Turkish cities which the Syrians were nationalized inside it, due to the intensive presence for Syrians south of the country.

The lawyer: Gazwan krunful, of the Free Syrian lawyers gathering, “None precisely knows the criteria, which is followed by the Turkish government for nationalization the Syrians? And who are the nominees for that? And there are doctors and academic persons in turkey since five years and most of them are waiting for nationalization but in vain, In spite of that the Turkish government said two years ago, that Syrian nationalization is targeted the competences “.

– Comparison between granting the Turkish nationality for Syrians & foreigners:

Exceptional nationality conditions for Syrians:

– A directly call from the Immigration Department to the nominee for nationalization (there aren’t any criteria).

– Recommendation of an official governmental party, or close to the government (political Syrian mostly).

The Turkish nationality conditions for foreigners:

– Real estate investment, in a value of $ 250 thousand dollars.

-Bank deposit, in a value of $ 500 thousand dollars.

– Work/labor residence for 5 years without exceeding the period in abroad of 6 months, with paying taxes during all of this period and learn the Turkish language fluently.

– Marriage of a Turkish girl, and the continuation and stability of marriage for 3 years at least.

– Ancestries and proving that by documents and Turkish courts.

– The persons who are providing great services, for Turkish state on the economic or industrial or scientific or cultural or arts or sports level.

A foothold

The absence of precise numbers creates a lot of questions about the numbers of nationalized Syrians refugees, by the Turkish opposition and the Syrian street itself, in the same time experts & analysts consider that the nationalization has a linked goal in creating influence to Turkey inside Syria in the future.

“There is an idea on the table that the goal of nationalizing Syrian is doing on the basis to create a foothold at Aleppo & Idlib regions, but I assert that the nationalizing operation is including the Syrians from the different Syrian governorates, not on regional basis, but maybe there is a far goal for the Turkish state, to create a human element to be a supporter of it at the regions close to the border (Turkish) “as referred by Krunful.

To verify the speech of experts & the persons who follow-up the Syrian nationalization case, the person who prepared this investigation has made an opinion poll at a random sample of Syrians, about the percentage of who obtained the Turkish nationality at the Syrian density’s cities in Turkey.

By asking the following question to measure levels of obtaining the nationality from Syrians, did you obtain the Turkish nationality or you submitted your documents to take it?

The results which were taken of fifty Syrians in Istanbul, Gaziantep, and Hatay, shown that 6 of 10 persons interacted with the opinion poll, obtained the nationality or submitted their documents in Istanbul. While this percentage increased in Gaziantep to 2 of 10 and 3 of 10 in Hatay state.

In another opinion poll included 90 Syrians were nationalized or submitted their documents recently at the same three cities, and the opinion poll’s question was, which is the Syrian city you are from?

The high percentage of nationalized people was from Aleppo and its countryside: 25.5%, Idlib: 23.3%, Damascus & Damascus countryside: 23.3%, latakia: 12.2%.

And in the absence of reliable numbers & accurate governmental statics, the nationalization operation still happened continuously in most of the Turkish states after its stopping for several months in some states.

In Gaziantep at south , the local Turkish television “Mega ” published a news on the last 30 November , about that the Immigration Department  at the city resumed the nationalization operation for Syrians irrespective of the qualifications or conditions, after its stopping before months for unknown reasons.

Abed Alrefai, from Damascus he is residing in Istanbul, on October 2018 he submitted a request for obtaining the nationality after a text message which was sent to the company accountant’s cell phone, which he is working in it, that he must go to the Immigration Department in Istanbul, and when we asked him about his opinion of why is Turkey nationalizes the Syrians?

“He has a labor residency since two years ago, and giving him the nationality based on that, and his opinion that the nationality to facilitate his work and to dispose of foreigners residency procedures”, As Alrefai said.

” The nationalized Syrians form a strategic depth for Turkey currently , after solving the conflict in Syria & returning back the Syrian refugees of who obtained the Turkish nationality” , as saying Mustafa Hamed Uglu , the head of the Syrian community in Istanbul .

As for Ayham Numaan (alias name), from Aleppo city, who was waiting his wife’s father to obtain the Turkish nationality to enable him obtains it by his wife, he doesn’t care about the reason of granting him the nationality, ” All what I want to dispose of difficulties of obtaining a Syrian passport’s and to dispose of the residency transactions & brokers and to obtain the right of owning house in Turkey”, as he is saying.

Naturally ,obtaining the Turkish nationality is considers a facilitation factor for residence in Turkey , so no needs to renew the Turkish residency and the Syrian passport, where the Syrian consulate in Istanbul is granting the Syrian citizens a passport valid for two years with a cost of $800 U.S, in addition, $ 350 a cost of the appointment & consulate fees, in another hand, the Turkish passport for 10 years costs $140 , and the ability to travel to 69 countries around the world with entrance visa .

-Distributing the nationalized persons, originally according to their Syrian cities as follows:

1.1 % Deir Azzor     1.1% Hama     2.2% Raqqa         4.4% Hasaka

6.6% Homs   25.5 Aleppo & Aleppo countryside        23.3 Idlib

23.3 % Damascus & Damascus countryside               12.2 latakia

0 % Tartous , Daraa & Swidaa

This opinion poll, which based on a sample of 90 Syrians have obtained the Turkish nationality recently in Istanbul, Hatay & Gaziantep.

The nationality is for scientific competencies!

In Turkish Hatay state (south), the investigation preparer documented nationalization & submitting documents of 360 Syrians, from end of April till end of November 2018, during monitoring comments of the nationalized persons , who submitted their documents through a group by (Whatsapp) application , regarding to the nationalized persons from Hatay or who were nominated for it.

“Here didn’t refuse any submitted request for obtaining the nationality” saying one of the Immigration Department’s employee.

Mahmoud Ghazal , residing at Hatay state which near to the Syrian border, from Latakia & Idlib side, he obtained the Turkish nationality in spite of that he did not has any Scientific & scholastic qualification or any private work and he is from Idlib , and currently he owns a small restaurant in “Rihania” city , and he is one of the middle-income persons .

“I am very happy by obtaining the Turkish nationality, and I don’t care about my Syrian passport, currently I am working as a Turkish, I can travel and I have secured the medical care for my children & their future, and the most important thing that I can buy a house, and I don’t intend to return back to Syria never “.

Ezz Eddin Alali, a pediatric doctor, and he have a work residency in Istanbul since two years, and no one called to him, for submitting to get the nationality, he is waiting that “eagerly” as he is saying.

Getting, “a Syrian passport & Turkish labor residency became very exhausted & cost matter”.

“We are Syrian’s competencies and the government said that it will nationalize the competencies, so where it is? Alali is asking.

This reality is contrary to the assurances of Turkish government officials in more than one occasion & declarations which reported by media, one of it a declaration of the last Turkish Prime Minister Yilderm – currently the president of the Perlman, that “granting the Turkish nationality will be only for competencies’ persons from Syrians “.

Mahmoud Alhalabi is another Syrian, he got the Turkish nationality two years ago, and he added an amendment on his family name (nickname), by adding (Uglu) word,

And He is of Turkmen descents, he submitted his documents for nationality, through known persons by him in the Directorate of Awqaf / Endowment, which has a paved way to nominates names of certain persons for nationality, his father a religion man and has relations with Directorate of Awqaf and he is speaking Turkish fluently.

As too Safi Alrefai from Damascus, holding a bachelor in Arabic language, before 5 months his refuge request to Canada was accepted, and when he decided to travel at the determined appointment they did not allow him, because his name included inside the nominees lists for nationality.

Thus he had to postpone his travel 15 days and he paid financial amounts until he becomes able through brokers, the governor’s known persons and Directorate of Immigration in Istanbul to remove his name from those lists to allow him to travel.

The Turkish states which the Syrians percentages are exceeding of 15 % of the total population:

Gaziantep: 20%           Orfa: 23%          Hatay: 28%        Kles: 91%

The criteria of nationalization are” absent”:

There are no fixed answers at the Immigration Department’s officials, after going the person who prepared this investigation to the central Immigration Department in Ankara, for asking about the required criteria for Syrians to get the nationality, about the receiving requests and giving appointments, “No fixed criteria, wait for call or a message in case you were nominated “. As the official said.

The situation doesn’t different in Istanbul, through asking the Civil Status Affairs’ director by the person who prepared the investigation at the city about the number of the nationalized Syrians, he refused to declare about any official numbers.

Before five years ago from now, and before the parliament & presidency elections, “30 thousands Syrians will vote at the parliament & presidency elections, after they have gotten the Turkish nationality” as said Binali Yildirm in a press statement reported by “Reuters”, and in consideration that the average of the Syrian family in turkey is 4 persons, so the number indicates to about 120 thousands nationalized person, and those rates were doubted by the Turkish opposition.

Through this reality, “Up to date, the numbers of nationalized Syrians do not exceed 50 thousand, and in consideration that everyone has a family of 3 persons, so we are in front of 200 thousand nationalized Syrians” as asserted by the lawyer Gazwan krunful.

“We do not know the hidden & the real number but certainly more & more than that” As Unal Chivek Oz, the deputy head of the opposed Republican People’s Party to the government.

Economic interdependence enhances the Turkish influence:

According to the Turkish Ministry of Interior, “Kels” the southern border city which considers the most Syrians presence inside it, and their percentage reaches 91% of the state’s population, and it is itself the state which inside it, the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is unleashed the issue of granting the Syrians competencies & investors the Turkish nationality exceptionally, in July 2016.

According to the Directorate of Trade & Customs data in southern Anatolia, the amount of Turkey exports to both of “Dire Alfurat” and “Ghusin Alzaytun” areas are $ 560 million dollars, and these numbers indicate strongly indicating the economic interdependence between it and the nearby Turkish cities.

And that accompanied with giving the permission of the Turkish government to the Turkish cars, investors & Turkish traders for going to Dire Alfurat’s areas across Jarablus crossing and returning back when they want, according to the local people asserts, to the investigation’s preparer.

The nationality for political purposes!

In spite of the Turkish government’s asserts that it will not grant the nationality to all Syrians which their numbers reached 3.5 million Syrian, so the Turkish opposition is accusing of the government in demographic changing in order to win the voters votes in the future.

So Camille Okaye Sender , the general secretary for the Republican People Party and he is one of the most prominent Turkish opposition parties, he  considers in a press statement to a group of journalists during November of 2018 that nationalize the Syrians is “a cover to achieve political goals”.

And “Yani Akeet” the Turkish journal which reported on the previous deputy of the opposition Republican people party Omot Oran that: ” the Syrians during 10 years will form about 10 percent of the population and that will leave a social, cultural and political effect on Turkey “.

“The nationalization of Syrians is concentrated at the south of Turkey due to the high intensive population for Syrians at sates of Hatay –Mersin –Orfa –Gaziantep – Kahraman, and Aramch” as saying the lawyer Krunful.

The reality is saying that the number of Syrian in Istanbul is exceeding on the half million, and the nationalized persons’ percentage not high as the results of the questionnaire showed, which has made by the investigation’s preparer.

And that imposes many new questions about the reason for increasing the nationalization rates at the south Turkish cities.

“The intensive nationalization hypothesis at the south Turkish areas, not related in elections issues or increasing votes of Justice and Development Party at these areas”, as saying the lawyer Krunful.

And he negates that the goal of nationalization in these areas for housing the nationalized persons in these areas to make a demographic changing, the authority, as he said “don’t have the right to force the residence at a certain area on the citizen”.

And Ibrahim Egman from “Denise” Center for polls, the same opinion, he thinks that “The authority cannot force a certain residence at certain cities on the citizens, but any Turkish citizen doesn’t have the right in any elections happening in Turkey, to elect outside of his department (his domicile registration place), unless he transferred it to his new city, and this is not a difficult step and it can be applied in any time “.

3.5 Million Syrians in Turkey (Ministry of Turkish Interior)

According to these statistics, the Syrians in Turkey form 4.2% of the total population for the country which estimated in 83 million people according to the Turkish statistics institute (Turkestat).

The position of the Turkish opposition and the street

There are different opinions in the Turkish street between rejectionists and pro-nationalization for Syrians, for many for many considerations linked to Syrians’ competition in the labor market, and the acquisition of governmental financial aids.

“Today there are more than 300 thousand Syrians have submitted their requests and we refuse to nationalize all these numbers and we do not accept that, because the nationalization process is happening not according to clear foundations” as Tashfik Oz , the deputy head of The People Party is saying to the investigation’s preparer.

Miral Uwkushnar , the leader of “Aljayid “party which dissident of the nationalist      movement , which established at the end of 2017 , she said ” The nationalization of Syrians should be stopped and agree with Syrian government “.

Yagmur Neil Gul, a Turkish citizen is clarifying that:” we don’t find work opportunities to give the nationality to Syrians”, and Zaki Banar, a Turkish citizen sees that “If they will work and pay the taxes I don’t have any problem in their obtaining the nationality”.

And this refusal for the Syrians nationalization process can be understood from convictions of the Turkish street and the opposition that the Syrians are causing unemployment to the Turks, in exchange for huge financial assistance from the Turkish government for them, and this is the conclusion of the general opinion polls about the Turks’ sight to the Syrians refugees.

This has been made by the Turkish police academy on 24 November 2018, and which its results were published by the Turkish channel “TRT HABER”.

Is this a granting nationality or for making them as Turks?

The Syrians nationalization’s issue and its development Coincides with the closure of the Syrian schools which are teaching by Arabic language, and forcing the Syrians students to enter the Turkish schools or going to the highly expensive private schools, which most of Syrians cannot bear its cost.

So the risks of the blending & nationalization process are become the last nail  in belonging the majority of the newborn babies & children to their country, even if number of them are nationalized or from the new “Turks”.

While the process of Syrians’ nationalization in turkey is going on, and blending the Syrians students in the Turkish schools and follow-up their scientific achievement in the Turkish language, and closing horizon of the near returning to Syria, because of risks losing the life, the deterioration of the local economy and establishing of economical projects in Turkey.

the Process of Making the next generation” as Turks /Turkification”, with vigorous attempts to make the current generation from Turkey’s Syrians as Turks, seems to be going on, in its way to becoming in future as Syria’s Turks.

This investigative story was completed by Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – (SIRAJ). Published on DARAJ

The post What backgrounds of granting nationality to tens thousands of Syrian in Turkey? appeared first on SIRAJ.

University students, engineers, activists, clerics, etc. died inside Syrian jails

Deaths during detention violating article 35 of the Syrian Constitution adopted in 2012,

“what lies behind leaking names of deceased prisoners?”, Analysts and humanrights activists answer

Damascus – Istanbul: 

It was deeply shocking for Zeina,30, to read ‘dead’ next to her husband’s name on the family record she had just got from the civil status department in al-Jisr al-Abyad district, downtown Damascus.

Zakariya,her husband, had beendetained in one of the secret jails of the Syrian security services since 2014 underfalse charges of opposing regime based on malicious allegations. Since then,Zeina has been dreaming of the reunite, but alas her dream has vanished.

Zeina stood still at the departmentexamining the record she got and muttering to herself,trying to find a reason for her husband’s death when an employee interrupted her by saying: “we know not the cause of death, our work is just to mere enter data we received in the computer

Not just me, there were manywaiting in a line outside the door to know the fate of theirloved ones. They were mostly women; mothers, sisters or wives of thedisappeareddetainees, each left the department weeping with papersblew all their hopes.”said Zeina.

Just like with Zeina, Um Khalid received news of the death of her son Khalid, 30s, who was arrested from al-Mezzeh neighborhood in Damascus late 2013 and held at the notorious prison of the Military Intelligence Branch 215, on charges of terrorismand incitement against regime, with being denied accessto any means of communication with his family.

“The first time I heard from my son was in 2014 when a former detainee informed meabout his whereabouts.While the secondand last was three months ago when I receiveda call from the Police Command, in Khalid Ibn al-Walid Street, Damascus, askingme to come and take my son’s personal effects. When I arrived there, they forcedmeto sign a paper saying that my son was kidnapped and killed by armed oppositiongroups”, Khalid’s mother recalled.

“Flurry of Syrian death certificatesresolved the fate ofthose disappeared since 2011 forprotesting against regime in several Syrian cities. Since last May,governmentstarted to deliver lists ofnames forthose died in detention to civil statusdepartments in Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Al Hasakah. Thus, detainees’ families learnedof their sons’ death by chance, when they requested records from registeroffices. While other families latersearched paper and digital documents fornames ofdetaineesunaccounted for.”, a woman stated to the investigation group.

Deaths inside detention facilities after prolonged imprisonment without clear charges ortrials, even denying self-defense in accordance with fair trials standards,according to relatives of those deceased, violates article 53  of the Syrian Constitutionamended in February 2012, almost a year following the onset of the peaceful protests.

Article 53 reads

 1. No one maybe investigated or arrested, except under an order or decision issued by thecompetent judicial authority, or if he was arrested in the case of being caughtin the act, or with intent to bring him to the judicial authorities on chargesof committing a felony or misdemeanor.

2. No one may be tortured or treated in a humiliatingmanner, and the law shall define the punishment for those who do so.

3. any person who is arrested must be informed of thereason for his arrest and his rights, and may not be incarcerated in front ofthe administrative authority except by an order of the competent judicialauthority.

4. everyone sentenced by a finale ruling, carried outhis sentence and the ruling proved wrong shall have the right to ask the statefor compensation for the damage he suffered.  

Um Khalid wasn’t told about her son’s place of burial, but she was assured that he was “properlyburied”.

She received his personal effectsalong with a paper addressed to the civil status department to extract the death certificate officially. 

“According to the accumulated database, 127,593 Syrian citizens are still detained by the Syrian regime, including 81,652 citizens whohave become forcibly-disappeared between March 2011 and August 2018.”According to SNHR data.

The report documents 836 cases where the Syrian regimehas revealed that they all died. The report stresses that the Syrian regime did not mention the cause of death, deliver the dead bodies to their families, or reveal the death when it happened. According to the report, the 863 cases included no less than 22 popular uprising activists, 10 university students, 2 engineers, 3 athletes, 4 teachers, and 3 religious figures, all arrested in 2011 and 2012.

Crowded Civil registry departments

On a daily basis, dozens of families came andcrowdedat the personal status department in al-Thawra Street, downtown Damascus,to extract family or personal records to know the fate of their disappeared sons. “At least 10 death notices for detainees from different Syrian areas delivered to their relatives daily.” the investigation group stated.

The testimonies followed a detailed report published by Amnesty International entitled ” the Human Slaughter house: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison”As many as 13,000 people have been executed in Saydnaya Prison since 2011, inthe utmost secrecy. “Between 2011 and 2015, every week and often twice aweek, groups of up to 50 peoplewere taken out of their prison cells and hangedto death.”

Testimonies and documents obtained by the investigation group proved that the Syrian security authorities distribute death liststo the civil statusdepartments, which in turn extract death certificates.That make it complicatedfor the detainees’ relatives to conduct any legal procedure to define cause or location of their death or even to demand the recoveryof their remains, as the procedures taken inside security branches are top secret which make it impossible for the relatives to make formal complaints.

Families began discovering whathappened to their loved ones by chance, when they requested records fromregister offices.

If dead, no cause provided for his death; execution, torture, natural death, by anillness or like.

Natural Death

Civil status department in al-Tremseh village, Hama province, received lists of dead detainees in al Assad prisons who were arrested on July 12, 2012, the same day that the “Tremseh Massacre” was carried out by regime forces in an attempt to capture the village, claiming the lives of more than 100, according to al-Tremseh residents.

Ali, the eldest among the six sons of the detainee SayelHoyan al-Tabeh, 45, fromal-Tremseh stated:

“Despite the passage of more than 7 years since the arrest of my father, wekept hoping of his return. However, on Wednesday June 27, 2018 we were asked by the military security branch in Mahardah city, Hama,to check his status in the records of the civil status department, where we found that he was listed with the deadby “natural death”,without any further details like the date of his death. We have no evidence proves the death of my father under torture, as we didn’t receive his body.”

Ra’ad Zaki al-Ali, 40s, from Kafr Zita, Hama countryside, was detained while heading to al-HalMarket in Damascus to sell vegetables and fruits he carried in his vehicle, on February 2012, and hasn’t returned since then, as he was detained by the AirForce Intelligence Branch in Harasta city, northern Damascus and his vehicleseized

Ra’ad’s family received his arrest news from his co-worker and on June 13, 2018 theyread his name on the death lists released by civil status department in Hama

“We managed to obtain a death certificate,indicates that Ra’ad has died early in 2015”, the family said.

The timing ofdeath certificatesissuance

Consistent testimonies obtained from analysts, experts, and eyewitnesses, confirm that since early 2017,when the fate of Eastern Ghouta was determined, andwith the regime’s full control over Damascus and its suburbs backed by Russia, coupled with the complexityof the detainees’ issue which led to conducting inspections ofall security servicesprisons by patrols of Russian Generals and high-ranking Syrian officers to look into the detainees’ files, to count those diedto list them on burial lists, and those still alive with their photos and all information related to them. It was something like screening the dead and survived detainees’ files

Director of the SNHR,Fadl Abdul Ghani, said in a press release on August 27, it is almost possible to determine the Assad regime’s goal behind the release of these lists. He said that there were two hypotheses. The first one is that the Russians asked the Assad regime to release these lists with the aim of closing the page on the issue of detainees as it remains an obstacle to the political process. The second one is that the Assad regime wants to appear as winning the war and that it is time now to turn the page on the issue of detainees. 

After conducting the two- months statistics it was decided to consider the files of detainees who were not exist in prison tobe belong for dead.

Then it wassuggested the death lists to be circulated among mukhtars, civil status departments, Police Command, and the Ministry of Interior for to inform the detainees’ relatives of their death. Inmates who weren’t been living in Regime forces and who had no clear address,or a phone number written in their files, listed deadin the civil status departments’ records. On the other hand,the fate of inmates who are still alive in prisons and are estimated 220,000 citizens, has yet to be defined, according to SNHR in 2017.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights- ECCHR, an organization dedicatedtostrategic litigationworldwide, including gross human rights violationsinSyria, stressed the immediate and unconditioned release of all politicalprisoners and the urgent investigations into the death cases inside the Syrianbyan “independent body”.In case the officer in charge of a prisonsproved to be the perpetrators, they must be held accountable individually andinternationally.

Purposes of the Regime’s Actions

For Ali Rasheed al-Hasan, lawyer and head of the Free Syrian Lawyers Aggregation: “the regime currently is acting out of law leaving only a single explanationthat the it is attempting to evade the awful crimes its security services committed”. 

Why Syrian authoritiesissuing death certificatesat this time?

Anwaral-Boni, head of the Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Researches (SCLSR)answered:there are several potential targetssuch as the withdrawal ofthedetainees’ issue from the political alternationtobringit to the table in theapproaching Astana Talks, which Russia agreed on.

To prevent any attempt to formRed Cross or international committees aimed at uncovering the fate of thedetainees, as it took the step first.”Another possibleaim is ” to prevent opening judicial investigation in Syria and accusesome symbols of criminality whom role has ended in this war,in an attempt towithdrawthe justice file from the hands of the international or the European Judiciary.Absolutely, this will not work as an independent impartial judiciary is notavailable in Syria.

”Another possibleaim is ” to prevent opening judicial investigation in Syria and accusesome symbols of criminality whom role has ended in this war,in an attempt towithdrawthe justice file from the hands of the international or the European Judiciary.Absolutely, this will not work as an independent impartial judiciary is notavailable in Syria.

Evading Accountability

The Syrian regime trying to evade international accountability for the “horrifying” numbers of deaths and detainees in its jails by releasinglists of hundreds who were tortured to deathand circulating them among civil status departments, claiming different cause for their deaths to evade accountability especially with the emergence of a political solution to the Syrian crisis.”,Human rights activists report.

Lawyer Michel Shamas, a member of the defense of prisoners of conscience and consceience, said that”the leak of the names of detainees killed under torture to the civilianpopulation in the Syrian governorates is an attempt by the regime to evade theconsequences of the file of missing persons and detainees in its prisons.”

Records inciting retaliation

Youssef’s father was arrested by the regime forces in late 2012 form Daraya city, Damascus countryside and shot dead during detention, an inmate reported. “The summary executionof my father without returning his bodyor mentioning the cause all incite feelings of retaliation albeit we have displaced to north Syria” Youssef, 30,assailed recalling the last moments of his father’s arrest.

Many of those who had screamed to death, had children, maybe three or four. How will those children reconcile with the murderer of their fathers? Can such action leavea lasting impact on the population and incite retaliations,which would resulted in shake of the foundations of peaceful coexistence and long-term stability between the power and civil society? 

the regime’s killing of detainees in its jails is a form of genocide against Syrian youthswho possess lofty values, mainly freedom, and it is a horror without parallel in the history. Stating that “the collective memory of the population will always recall this calamity, with feelings of sorrow, rage and animosity against the perpetrator.”, said Ahmad Barkawi, a Palestinian researcher and former president of the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Damascus, stated to the investigation group

“Social coexistence sounds impossible in the foreseeable futurealbeit living in one place. I mean by “coexistence”the sense of belonging and the resulting relationships likemarriage and friendship andsharingfortunate and unfortunate occasions ” he added. 

Testimonies of former detainees or human rights reports have deeply affected the population especially the families and relatives of detainees “The community incurrently in shock and sorrow which engrave deep in hearts of mothers, fathers,children, relatives and in the community as a whole”, he concluded.

Recovering the remains

“The overwhelming evidence -of killings and torture of detainees in Syrian jails, collected by rights and international organizations, should be adduced to international tribunals not to national courts, in order to hold accountable those involved on the basis ofprinciple of universal jurisdiction which is applied in some countries like France, Germany and Spain along with some Scandinavian states. As competent counsel appointed who in turn communicate with the competent authorities and prepare case files in accordance with international standards.”, said Cecilia Pechmeze, the legal expert in Syrians for Truth and Justice/STJ, based in Istanbul, Turkey.

Pechmezegoes on to say that the death certificates constitute issued by the regime constituted, in principle, a clearrecognition of their death under the custody of the Syrian government. The factthat would be linked to other facts of the issue at stake, like testimoniesfrom detainees’ relatives who visited them in jails or from former detainees whohad shared the same cell with dead.”

With the issuance of lists of dead detainees in Syrian jails who had been forcefully disappeared for years, Syrian regime continues to deny that anything ever happened and thatit had committed any crimes despite the issuance of death certificates that weredelivered to the detainees’ relatives which is one of the incriminating evidences along with the continued denying institution and international commissions of inquiry access to those prisons.”

In a report asrecently as July 2018, Human Rights Watch says “if they are dead, thefamilies should be able to recover the remains and learn about thecircumstances of the death through an independent investigation. The Syriangovernment must not be allowed to escape without accountability.”

This report was completed by Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) and Damascus Voice in association with the Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism – (SIRAJ) Coached by Ali Ibrahim, Published on DARAJ.  

The post “Deaths Under State Custody” appeared first on SIRAJ.

By: Musab al-Shehab

Urfa, Turkey, Jan, 2016, (Al-Arabi al-Jadid) –When he taught at the informal Ghiytah Mater school, funded by volunteers in the Turkish city of Urfa, his monthly salary did not exceed $30. However, Osama’s salary increased six fold to $225 at Al-Ikha School., though only for a while.

“I was caught between two fires: My livelihood on the one hand and my students who became attached to me on the other hand,” Osama said.

His ordeal began when he left the financially-unstable Ghiyath Matar (elementary/secondary) school, founded by Syrian volunteers on the 1st of October, 2013.

“They used to pay us 200 Turkish liras ($90) for three months while I paid 550 liras ($250) a month for rent, excluding other expenses,” said the teacher who holds a degree in physics. “This sum is next to zero,” added the father of three.

Al-Ihsan (now Al-Ikha) school took in Osama on 20/3/2014. There, he found a better opportunity to work with a Kuwaiti donor financing the school, paying 500 liras ($225) as a minimum basic salary for every teacher. However, five months later, the Kuwaiti donor stopped paying without giving his reasons, and Osama along with 24 other teachers lost their pay.

Osama is one of many teachers facing such conditions in volunteer, donor-funded schools.

The author of this investigation organized a survey in Urfa, home to about 500,000 Syrian refugees, covering 67 Syrian teachers in three volunteer schools (Bila Hudud, Al-Bahaa, and Obeida AL-Hamoud). The schools have nearly 1,500 students out of 100,000 school-aged Syrians in Urfa and its countryside, who had fled the war in their country.

Turkey hosts half a million school-age Syrians, who account for a quarter of the total number of Syrian refugees in Turkey, home to 250 Syrian schools according to estimates by the Turkish government. Only one of five of these children is enrolled at school (Figure-2 quotes) The survey shows that 46 percent of teachers would leave their profession if they can get other work at a fixed salary, which is not possible to have in these schools. Around 20,000 teachers work in Syrian territories outside the control of the regime, while the number of Syrian teachers in Turkey stands at around 5,000.

Over ten months of investigation covering eight schools in Urfa, the author concluded that all these schools (Sirine 1, Sirine 2, Bila Hudud, Al-Bahaa, Al-Ikhaa, Obeida al-Hamoud, Al-Fajr, and Ghiyath Matar), which have more than 3500 students and 200 teachers combined, do not pay fixed salaries but small “bonuses” that vary from school to school. The wages come either from donors, relief groups, religious groups or international organizations.

In truth, there are no clear regulations for establishing volunteer schools in Turkey, while the Ministry of Education of the Syrian regime observes 67 different articles and 150 provisions as conditions to license private schools and nurseries in Syria.

Five out of the eight schools in Urfa are not subject to any educational law. They have no permits to operate and do not report to any official authority, be it Turkish or Syrian. The rest (Sirine 1, Sirine 2, and Bila Hudud) abide by Turkey’s Education Law.

The elementary certificate examinations are nonstandard. Each school has its own format, unlike the situation in Syrian areas controlled by the regime. The Turkish Ministry of Education seems indifferent, while donors have a “seasonal” approach to support, and the Ministry of Education of the Syrian interim government is complacent.

Students who cannot read or do arithmetic

At Al-Bahaa School, which collects nominal fees of 50 liras ($22) per month from every student, the journalist tested 15 students, in third grade, to assess their educational attainment in the absence of job stability for the teachers. Only one student passed the aptitude test.

At Al-Bahaa volunteer school in Urfa, on the 3rd of October, 2015, he tested at random 15 third grade students. He used a written aptitude test prepared by an education expert with ten years of experience in teaching at primary schools in Aleppo. Mohammad Saleh, who holds a degree in education, believes the test is simple and would be easy to a student studying the official curriculum of the Syrian interim government.

After the 30 minute test, the results were as follows:

9 out of 15 students failed to answer correctly 6/3. One student of the remaining six answered correctly and passed the test

In these eight schools, the curriculum taught is the amended Syrian curriculum issued by the Ministry of Education in the Syrian interim government. It is distributed free of charge. The curriculum was developed in 2013 to remove any reference to the regime and its followers, said Dr. Abdul-Rahman Kawara, executive director of the Syrian Education Commission in an interview on Al-Aan TV. Although the curricula were unified, orientations change from one school to another. Schools funded by Turkish religious endowments promote more conservative climates, in terms of separating the sexes and implicitly imposing the headscarf or certain dress codes by refusing to enroll girls who are bareheaded without stating a reason. Other schools seek to emphasize a certain identity and separate supporters and opponents of the Syrian regime, refusing to enroll loyalists.

The journalist established that eight schools are financially unstable, having been established by Syrian volunteers without proper administration. Two schools — (Ghiyath Matar and Al-Ikha) — are funded by Syrian donors and other private sources. The other two (Obeida al-Hamoud and Al-Bahaa) collect nominal fees from the students (50 liras/$22) paid for one time only at the first school. As for the second school, fees are collected monthly.

The four stable ones: Two are funded by UNICEF, one is funded by Turkish endowments and the fourth is funded by the Syrian Al-Ataa Relief and Development Organizations, which receives support from Arab organizations. The first three schools are administratively under the supervision of the Turkish Ministry of Education.

The role of the interim government

Around 73% of teachers surveyed in our poll held the interim Syrian government, based in Gaziantep, Turkey, responsible for not paying their salaries and for neglecting their rights.

The term “volunteer” (without formal rights) has been associated with Syrian teachers in Urfa-based so-called “volunteer schools”. These are divided into two types: Formal schools that answer administratively to the Turkish Ministry of Education and funded by Turkish endowments and UNICEF. And informal schools, which have no permits or administrative supervision and are established by Syrian volunteers with support from donors and humanitarian groups. Some are self-funded through nominal fees collected from the citizens.

Syrian schools without supervision

During the field research, the journalist found out that the Syrian schools in Urfa had no links to the Ministry of Education in the Syrian interim government. This is true for all schools in Turkey, according to Azzam Khanji, director of the Ministry of Education in the interim government.

Conditional support and discrimination

Although monthly bonuses are paid, Anas Awf, deputy director of the Bila Hudud school (funded by Turkish endowments and answering to Turkey’s Education Ministry), said they are not enough compared to what is paid to Turkish teachers who are paid up to 10 percent more than their Syrian counterparts and have official work contracts.

The Turkish endowments, which are not lacking in financial resources according to Awf, funds the Bila Hudud school established by Syrian volunteers in April 2014. It was then expanded in February 2015 and now comprises four schools covering all stages of school education, according to Awf.

The endowments pay 8.5 liras ($3.5) per hour to teachers as bonus. Syrian teachers thus earn 650-800 liras ($270-330) for 80 to 95 hours per month.

This equation does not apply to teachers of Turkish Language who are Turks. They earn 9.5 liras ($4) per hour and get many times more the working hours with a minimum of 160 hours per month. They also benefit from health insurance and end of service compensation, in addition to pension salaries, and have official work contracts.

On the other hand, Syrian teachers sign a ceremonial contract of “moral commitment” with the Ministry of Education in Turkey. The contract states that the work is on a volunteer basis, with no obligations on the first party: no health insurance or salary from the ministry. Only bonuses are granted, regardless of the source.

Teachers are not allowed to object or claim compensation if they are fired. This happened to 25 teachers who were sacked from Bila Hudud on September 2nd, 2015 without the reasons being stated. At the end of the first semester, they were told to join the second semester — but that they had to wait until they are called. They were never called, and new teachers replaced them, according to an administrator at the school who asked not to be named.

Moreover, the Ministry of Education imposed the appointment of a Turkish coordinator in the Bila Hudud schools. He received 3,000 liras a month ($1250) while a Syrian deputy received 850 liras ($350) from Turkish endowments.

This reporter conducted a comparison between three Syrian schools, Bila Hudud, Al-Bahaa, Obeida al-Hamoud; and the Iraqi Nineveh School which is subordinate to the Iraqi Ministry of Education. The Iraqi school was opened on 1/11/2014 in the city of Urfa, attracting 17 specialized Syrian teachers, all degree-holders. These teachers include Osama, whose conditions improved after he started earning 1400 Turkish liras ($635) monthly.

The comparison shows that the three “volunteer” schools only pay their teachers bonuses: one—$330 monthly as a maximum; the second $160 per month; while the third paid $600 for the entire scholastic year.

In the Bila Hudud school, there are 620 students. Each bench seats 3 to 4 students, while the number of total students in Al-Bahaa and Obeida al-Hamoud is 850. Sometimes, a single bench could have 8 students at Obeida AL-Hamoud school.

On the other hand, every student has his own desk in the private school, which has only 75 students. This school hires specialized teachers who are paid a minimum of  $400 per month.

All volunteer schools have teachers who never worked in teaching before or who teach outside their fields (between 7 and 39 percent of teachers in the three schools).

Timid assistance

In February 2014, the Ministry of Education in the Syrian interim government printed 2 million books free of charge as a step forward for all academic levels, to cover the needs of 200,000 students – 80% for schools in liberated areas and 20% for Syrian schools in neighboring countries, according to Dr. Abdul-Rahman AL-Haj, adviser to the Interim Minister for Educational Affairs.

The interim government also announced on its official page on March 28th, 2014, that $1.5 million has been disbursed to cover six months’ worth of salaries to teachers working in Syrian provinces.

طHowever, the government has only spent $1 million out of the declared sum over one month, Azzam Khanji, director of the Education Ministry (interim), said in an interview.

“When the decision was issued, I noted to the ministry that the sum is not enough to cover six months and 20,000 teachers inside Syria.Each teacher would get 10,000 Syrian pounds ($50), which means they need $6 million in six months. Thus, a single payment was handed out in some provinces and in others two payments of 5000 Syrian pounds ($25)”.

He justified the reduction of the sum by saying: “Some areas have no schools left in them as a result of the battles raging there.” Nevertheless, he admitted to failing to properly announce the reduction, saying it was an unintended mistake. Khanji added: “Some ask what happened to the rest of the money? We say it went to the summer offset project” in reference to free lessons in all subjects lasting 2-and-a-half months, starting in July 2014. The project targeted students who missed academic years and new refugees.

Nour AL-Din Mahamid, the official who follows up educational departments in Syria, said 41,700 students benefit from the project in Turkey, Lebanon, and the Syrian interior.

At the same time, approval came to support troubled schools in Turkey and  in other countries neighboring Syria with $100,000 monthly over a period of four months. The interim cabinet in May and June 2014 issued a decision allocating $200,000 (lump sum to all schools) to further support troubled schools in Turkey.

Although most schools in Urfa are considered financially-troubled, the Ghiyath Matar school was the only one to receive funding from this allocation, getting 7600 liras ($3450) to cover rent for four months, onApril 22nd, 2014.

No supervision

Kinda al-Rawi, a volunteer, is the director of Ghiyath Matar school. She was suspended in early 2015 from her post as representative of the Ministry of Education in Urfa, for reasons unknown to her.

Kinda said: “Education without government support may continue, but haphazardly.” She added that “there is a lack of supervision over these schools. Teachers can close the door to students and impart on them his/her ideas, and when bonuses are not available only teachers with other sources of income step forward, which means we have to overlook credentials.”

Kinda stressed that volunteer schools have lost many skilled teachers because of the lack of stable wages. This includes her school, which was left by six specialized teachers in the first 5 months after the school was launched. Someone told her: “I would rather carry stones than continue to teach.”

Strike

On December 12th, 2014, two schools went on strike in the city of Urfa (Al-Ikha and Obeida al-Hamoud) in protest at “the failure of the interim government toward troubled schools and teachers who do not receive wages”. Um Tahsin at Obeida al-Hamoud, held a banner, along with her students outside the school, demanding wages to be paid. Although Obeida al-Hamoud school collects fees from its 420 students, this is not enough to cover event rent, according to its director Ziad Mahidi. Mahidi. He said the fees are nominal, not exceeding 50 liras, and are paid once a year. “A large percentage of the students cannot afford the fees, and they are exempted.”

Neglect and empty promises

On March 19th, 2014, Iyad AL-Qudsi, deputy interim prime minister said in a statement published on the interim government’s website, that “the government has a plan to support all schools in Turkey, starting with those that are facing problems in meeting costs and not salaries of their teachers.”

However, Ahmad al-Qassem, director of the interim government’s office in Urfa, had a different opinion. “Those schools are private sector and are not actually subordinate to the interim government, but to donors. Hence, they are their responsibility.”

Qassem believes all sides are responsible for the failure, and blamed the former minister of education Muhyiddin Bananeh for most of the administrative failure.

This reporter found out that the Education Office does not have any allocations or a budget. The office of the interim government in Urfa has been corresponding with the ministry of education since December 2014 to resolve outstanding problems but to no avail.

On March 17th, 2015, the head of the Syrian interim government decided to close his government’s offices in Turkish cities, without giving reasons. A source in the Syrian National Coalition who asked not to be named said the main reason behind the closure of the offices in Istanbul, Urfa, Mardin, and Hatay is the inability of the interim government to pay the salaries of staff and other costs amounting to $72,000 a month.

Shortage in funding

On the morning of March 25, 2015, this reporter went to the Turkish city of Gaziantep, to meet with the Minister of Education Imad Barq. After waiting for more than half an hour the next day in a small room, the request for a meeting was denied “for reasons specific to the minister”, according to the secretary. The reporter’s insistence on the importance of getting official answers to clarify matters was ignored.

On the morning of March 27, the attempt was repeated with no result. On the advice of the secretary, the author headed to the office of the Education Department Azzam Khanji in the same building.

“Unfortunately, the Director of Education traveled to Istanbul, and will come back after a few days,” was the answer of his office manager. On March 31, the journalist met with Azzam Khanji.

We asked him why wages are not allocated to teachers in Turkey, similar to the teachers in the Syrian interior who were allocated $1.5 million over six months. He replied: “The total sum given to the interim government since its inception in 2013 was 50 million euros. The Ministry of Education was allocated only 8 million Euros. Even if the entire budget of the government is diverted to the Education Ministry, it won’t be enough.”

Khanji added that $90 million are needed to cover the educational needs of Syrian students in the liberated areas in Syria and in neighboring countries, including books and monthly grants to teachers.

Moral and ethical role

Khanji said the schools are under direct Turkish supervision (the Ministry of National Education) while the role of the Syrian interim Education Ministry was “moral and ethical”.

The Syrian official held the UN and other international organizations responsible for neglecting education. “We reached out to the known international organizations. They all say nice things about cooperation, but in the end, they want to get the information and deal directly with schools.”

Paragraph (2) Article (28) in the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child in paragraph states: “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that school discipline is administered in a manner consistent with the child’s human dignity and in conformity with the present Convention.”

Up in the air

In October 2014, the Ministry of Education in Turkey began including Syrian schools under its administrative responsibility. The ministry overlooked the financial aspects, which means schools remain in the same position, looking for sponsors to cover their expenses and the wages of their teachers before they go the same way Osama went.

Osama struck luck recently after he almost lost hope. The Iraqi Nineveh school became his lifeline. In March 2015, the Obeida al-Hamoud school was closed down after it was no longer able to meet its expenses.

This investigation was completed with the support of  Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) – www.arij.net – and coached by Saad Hatter. Before the completion of this investigation, Musab al-Shehab joined the convoys of Syrians boarding death boats to seek asylum in Europe.

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Ahmed Haj Hamdo
Istanbul, Turkey, March 2006,

(al-Hayat) – The owner of a Turkish textile factory refused to pay the costs of treatment and compensation for a Syrian refugee worker who was left with permanent disability in his left foot while working at a machine.
Ibrahim Al-Ali, 33, who worked at a factory at an industrial zone in Istanbul was transferred to a private hospital where doctors installed catheters in his leg right after the accident. His impoverished family in Syria painstakingly raised money to pay for his treatment, only for doctors to inform him he would no longer be able to use his injured leg for walking.
After his treatment Ibrahim received another shock when his Turkish boss told him he had no rights at the company and would not be compensated for the damage and the cost of treatment.
This was despite the fact that Turkish law guarantees such rights for workers with legal contracts. Ibrahim threatened to go to the police but ultimately, like most Syrians in Turkey do, he changed his mind, fearing prosecution and deportation.
Ibrahim is not the only Syrian to have his labour rights violated in a country where more than 2.5 million Syrians have come as refugees since the conflict started in their country in 2011, according to official figures. At least half a million of them are looking for jobs and most of them do not have official permits to work that would guarantee their labour rights.
Syrian middlemen in Turkey have become professionals at circumventing labour laws. According to interviewed workers, they lure jobseekers with probationary employment at sewing shops and textile factories. The jobseekers however remain vulnerable to be sacked without any compensation or health coverage in the event of accidents at the workplace, in a system of exploitation that is now known in Turkey as onbeş, the Turkish word for 15 [days].
In mid-2013 Turkish labour laws were amended to clarify which foreign workers would keep the right to insurance, healthcare, paid leave and the minimum wage. Under the new amendments these rights were extended only to foreign investors, private sector employees working in the investment sector or those granted a normal work permit. Any and all other workers were not necessarily guaranteed those same rights, leaving refugee workers with nothing to gain by filing complaints and providing evidence of abuse.
Nashaat, another refugee worker who is 18, did not fare better than Ibrahim. Nashaat was injured in his hand while working on a very old sewing machine., requiring eight stitches that unfortunately left his hand partially paralyzed.
Nashaat said: “My boss forced me to work on the machine exclusively even though he knew it had injured me in the hand three months ago as the needles keep breaking”.
An hour after working on the machine, the needle broke.
Nashaat said everyone panicked when the incident happened. His employer sent someone to scout the street before sending him off to a private clinic. An hour later he had sent 70 Turkish liras ($20) and a message that said: “I don’t want any trouble because of you”.

“This meant I was fired,” Nashaat said.

Ghazwan Qurunful, a Syrian lawyer specializing in the affairs of Syrians in Turkey, said the proportion of Syrians with work permits is very low because of the difficulty of obtaining them.
Qurunful added: “The Syrian workers’ lack of any working documents has made them prey to brokers and some companies looking to defraud them. At the same time, they are unable to secure their rights.”
However, the lawyer said that refugees can go to the police and file complaints.
The plight of exploited Syrian workers might be resolved now that the Turkish government decided earlier this year to grant work permits to Syrians on its territories. This measure according to Qurunful will protect Syrians from deportation, something that Syrian refugees in neighboring countries typically experience because they rarely obtain work permits.
Qurunful also expressed hope that the problem of low wages would be resolved after the Turkish government agreed on a minimum wage at 1300 Turkish liras ($420) on 15/1/2016.
But as Turkey approved work permits for Syrians on its territories, it also imposed entry visas on Syrians while exempting those in violation of residency papers from the requirements of departure, in effect leaving them in limbo.
These decisions came after a deal between Turkey and the European Union was leaked to the public, by which Turkey prevents the flow of Syrians into Europe through its territories in return for $3 billion euros in aid for hosting them.
Safwan Bash Almazi, a spokesman for the Turkish Labour Ministry told this reporter that the number of work permits that would be given to Syrians would be more than half a million.
The Labour Ministry admitted implicitly to the existence of exploitation, saying they had issued a decision granting work permits to foreigners “under the temporary protection of the Turkish government” with the aim of specifying a legal framework for their employment and the prevention of their illegal exploitation by setting a minimum wage of 1300 Turkish liras.
However, it has yet to be enforced according to Syrian workers we interviewed three months after the decision was issued. This means that that granting work permits cannot quickly put an end to the systematic exploitation of Syrian workers.
The ministry added: “Foreign workers who are exposed to exploitation can file complaints. If complaints are submitted correctly, they are followed up at the Inspection Department.” The ministry said there had been 318 complaints submitted in 2015 by foreign workers against their employers. It also said that inspectors were assigned to investigate them, but did not say whether there were complaints from Syrian workers specifically.
However, according to the ministry, this procedure faces two issues. First, some complaints are baseless. Second, the ministry needs time to check the complaint and collect documents, which could take up to two months in some cases. During this period, the worker in question may have left the workplace where he/she were exposed to rights violations, thus making it difficult to follow up on the complaint.
Meanwhile, Syrians continue to be hired in workshops based on the informal onbeş system. The main function of this informal system is to circumvent Turkish Labour Law, which forces employers to respect all rights should they be caught by the Ministry of Labour patrols that inspect industrial and commercial facilities on a bi-weekly basis.
Patrols run by the Social Security Corporation, for example, ensure that all workers in a given enterprise have work and health insurance.
But what happens sometimes is that employers have memorised the times of visits by these patrol and end contracts before they arrive, according to interviews conducted with dozens of Syrian workers.
“The inspectors of the ministry and the Social Security work to verify no laws are being broken by employers against foreign workers. In the event any breach of the law is documented, administrative sanctions are implemented,” the Labour Ministry official told this reporter.
Binyamin Agha Dolaner, Executive Director at Securta, a government company specialized in labour insurance since 1987, said that the proportion of evasion of insurance for workers in normal years was about 42%.
Rapid changes within the workforce, desperation for income and deliberate oversight by the Ministry of Labour had led this proportion to grow to more than 65%.
The Ministry of Labour said it does not send out patrols every 15 days. But it did not elaborate on how the patrols work, nor did they discuss their schedule.
Record numbers
Ammar N, 26, a Syrian national, has changed a record number of jobs at workshops.
In response to an ad placed by a Syrian national in Istanbul on a poster in Bayrampaşa district, one sewing shop was contacted in the area of Gaziosmanpaşa in Istanbul on December 3, 2015.
When he called the number, a Syrian national who worked for the Turkish employer answered stating that any prospective employee “must work for two weeks without pay at first as a trial period, to verify the quality of your work. After that, hours and the salary will be agreed. If the work does not suit you, you can move to another workshop to try it out.”
Syrian Wael Baylouni was defrauded three times by the same broker working in collusion with Turkish employers to exploit workers. Wael met the broker at a café in Gaziantep, where he was promised a job at clothes factory.
Wael said: “I worked in a small workshop for 10 days after signing a contract written in Turkish that I do not understand. Afterwards, he told me the employer was not happy with my performance, and took me to another shop, where I worked for 12 days before I was fired. Each time I asked about my wage, the employer would ask me to come back the following week because he did not have the money. So I knew I was being defrauded.”
We tried to get a copy of the contract but we couldn’t as all his employers did not give him a copy. Legally speaking, this means that Wael has not signed a contract. Other workers surveyed all confirmed that they had not been given copies of their contracts either.
Headhunting
The job seekers are hunted under various names on social media including Facebook and in hundreds of public and closed pages and groups.
According to e-marketing expert Mahmoud Habbak, a large proportion of these sites are designed to lure Syrians to exploit them and defraud them. By observing how these pages are set up, he added, one can notice that more than ten pages are created each day, probably owned by the same network as the same phone numbers and addresses used.
Closed groups are even more dangerous, he continued, as these pages invite users for specific purposes. Hence, the ability to lure victims increases, as happens with human and organ traffickers.
In areas with large numbers of Syrians in Istanbul, Mersin, and Gaziantep, posters written in weak Arabic advertise jobs at attractive salaries without adequate information on the nature of the work or the hours.
In the course of our investigation this reporter accompanied Duraid, a young Syrian who has been in Turkey since 2011, for five days to a workshop on the edges of Istanbul.
“Every 15 days on average, the boss asks me to hide for an hour, until the Ministry of Labour patrol finishes its inspection round.” He added: “It is not only the Syrians who suffer from this, but also other refugees like Bengalis, Sudanese, and others.”
Our inspection of five workshops and our survey of dozens of workers showed that more than three quarters of them had been asked to move to another workshops after 15 days or slightly more. It also showed that nearly two thirds were not asked to show permits or ID papers and more than three fifths had moved between three to five sewing workshops in Turkey.
To see the rest of the survey and questions visit the following link:
http://bit.ly/1Por9Tk
Competing with Syrians
In Turkey, as in Jordan and Egypt, Syrian-made products and services are competing in local markets because of their low prices and the cheaper wages in comparison local products and workers. Below are some examples of the difference in prices between Syrian and Turkish products:
Item Turkish item/rate
Fee for sewing pants Syrian worker pay Turkish worker pay Chamber of Commerce mandated pay
Sewing pants 30 Turkish liras 90 Turkish liras 75-100 liras
Sewing cotton pyjamas 5 Turkish liras 22 Turkish liras 17-30 Turkish liras

Hamza, 48, prays every day to God to keep him employed. “Even if I have to change a workshop every 15 days I’m happy.” However, Salma, 52 and her husband, 60, who work at the packaging and processing department are more fearful.
“We fear that what happened to us in Egypt would happen again. We complained against the employer so he sent us a patrol the next day and we were deported to Turkey.”
Note: Mohammad Baroudi and Turkish journalist Tugba Tekeret contributed to this investigation that was completed with support from Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) – www.arij.net

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