Anti-Syrian Racism post Istanbul Municipality election re-run | Unknown numbers of refugee children missing | The changing nature of the Syria-Turkey border |
News & Reports
Anti-Syrian Racism post Istanbul Municipality election re-run
The anti-Syrian discourse which was prevalent during the municipality elections, and legitimated by the language which political authorities used has intensified in the aftermath of the results. CHP mayors in several Turkish municipalities publicly used anti-Syrian rhetoric during their campaign bids. The mayor of the town of Kemalpasa in western Turkey, Ridvan Karakayli, said on TV, “We will get rid of Syrians. There is peace in Syria, so what are they doing here? There are shops with signboards with the Syrian language [a reference to Arabic] near our party [building]. I will remove them. They will be taken away from here.”
New Report on Migrant
Workers | 5 Afghans died in fire in Ankara | 6 people died in shipwrecks in the
Aegean | Election campaigns fuel Racist Discourses | New Report on Syrians
Women’s perspectives on Life in Turkey
News&Reports
Ankara based ISIG (Health and Safety Labour
Watch, Turkey) have released their report on refugee workers in Ankara. The turkish-language report finds that
wages for migrant workers begin from 200 TL weekly but vary according to age
and working experience. Child labourers earn around 20 TL per day in gathering
recycling materials and up to 250 TL per week in furniture workshops. After
five Syrian workers died in a fire in January, their employer offered 30,000 TL
to their families in compensation, which they did not accept. The families, who
have to live off around 300 TL per week since losing their breadwinners, have
started legal procedures against the employer. Just last week again, 5 Afghan workers died when the
abandoned building in an industrial area they were living in outside of Ankara,
caught fire. They had been collecting paper and other garbage for around 50 TL
a day, working for around 16-17 hours for 7 days of the week. We hope to follow
up on this topic further on HarekAct.
Talks on ‘safe zone’///Ongoing return discourse///Arbitrary deportations///Migrant labour/// Municipal-level responses to refugees
News&Reports:
Photo: AFP
U.S. delegation visited Turkey presumably to discuss the Syrian “safe zone”: After Trump reversed his decision to fully withdraw from Syria with the continued presence of about 400 US troops, the meeting was expected to discuss the stalled talks concerning a safe zone across the border in Northern Syria, an issue which the two sides have divergent views on, according to some sources. Trump’s senior adviser Kushner’s three-hour meeting with Erdogan ended without an official statement. – 27.02.2019
Health and Safety Labour Watch-Turkey published the results of its yearly report on “murders because of work” regarding migrant workers. HESA Labour Watch-Turkey is a network organization carried out by workers and their families from various industries, lines of work, and professions fighting for a healthy and safe life and working conditions. HESA Labour Watch defines certain worker deaths as “murders because of work” rather than “work accidents” to highlight that all work accidents and occupational illnesses are preventable. Therefore, we are presenting you the results of this valuable report in an English translation that complies with the terminology used in the original.
Birgün introduces striking data on the migrant labour in Turkey as indicated by the report prepared by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) titled “Migrant Labour in our Country”.
Via Birgün – According to the “Migrant Labour in Our Country” report prepared by CHP (Republican People’s party) Labour Bureau, the majority of migrants, with Syrians making up the largest number, are working irregularly, under heavy exploitative conditions, and dozens of them have lost their lives in workplace homicides.
This article was originally published in Turkish by Birgün.
Via Ahval News / Nurcan Baysal (from August 25)- Before the European Union and Turkey signed an agreement in 2016 to limit the number of Syrian refugees heading to Europe in return for aid to help those who had fled the war to Turkey, I was among a group of academics and activists who work on refugee issues in Turkey invited to Berlin to discuss the matter.
Most of the 3.5m Syrians in Turkey can at least work, but the future is precarious
Via The Economist –GAZIANTEP | Returning to Turkey from Germany with four children in tow was not easy for Faisl Alakrch, a 36-year-old Syrian. He had to use a people-smuggler to retrace, in reverse, the route he had taken the year before. His younger brothers have remained in Germany and are studying at university, but he wanted to work, and complains that “I could not do anything there.” Turkey, by contrast, has made it easy for him to operate. He was able to register a company and set up a café in Gaziantep, a city close to the Syrian border. He has now been invited to become a Turkish citizen. His six-year-old son speaks a mixture of German, Turkish and Arabic. Continue reading Syrian refugees find Turkey more welcoming than western Europe→
Via Migrant Solidarity Network – There has been news coming related to the strikes of saya (shoe-upper) workers from all corners of Turkey since more than a month. Saya workers organized boycotts and strikes in many cities from Konya to Manisa, from İzmir to Adana and from İstanbul to Antep because of following reasons: Non-covered employment without job security, bad working conditions and long working hours and ill-payments etc. Continue reading Migrant solidarity network on the resistance of saya-workers across Turkey→
The Birleşik Metal İşçileri Sendikası (Metalworkers Union) published a report on Syrian migrants’ labour market. The study focuses on their situation in the textile sector in Istanbul.
