What happens after displacement? Syrians re-settling Istanbul through food (original) (raw)
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Civil Society Review, 2020
This paper critically engages with Turkey’s refugee governance by offering insight into the daily struggles, aspirations, and longings of Syrian Kurdish migrants living in the inner-city neighbourhood of Demirkapı, Istanbul. It aims to sketch a multifaceted Kurdish geography of displacements beyond nation-state borders and to show how social differences and hierarchies of class, gender, and ethnicity shape greatly the experiences of the groups living in the neighbourhood. The paper is based on an ethnographic field research that consists of first-hand observations, conversations, and 25 semi- structured in-depth interviews with Kurdish migrants. The emplaced, ethnographic research is particularly promising to understand the daily lives of migrants and their multi-layered history of displacement and migration within and across borders. This history, we underscore, is not a past history, but one that unfolds in the present, within the current social hierarchies and in the midst of the ongoing crises in Syria and Iraq that poignantly shape the feelings, expectations, and memories of the Kurdish people currently living in Demirkapı. Each life trajectory, that we briefly describe, involves a strenuous effort to establish a relatively stable and enriching life under the precarious conditions of ongoing crises and authoritarian neoliberal capitalism.
2022
Article Information The Syrian Civil War compelled vast numbers of Syrians to leave their homeland, and taking advantage of Turkey's Open Door Policy, millions of Syrians crossed the shared border between 2011 and 2015 in search of refuge. The temporary protection nature of Turkey's Policy for Syrians prevented the formation of comprehensive socio-spatial policies related to the provision of human rights. Regarding to the right to housing, the lack of government accommodation for refugees meant that the Syrian refugees became a part of Turkey's existing housing problems, such as squatting and failed urban regeneration projects. The present study reveals different dimensions of housing problems that Syrian refugees encountered such as poor housing conditions, socio-spatial isolation, unaffordability, and forced mobility through the Ankara case. It is argued that living in an area in the process of urban regeneration has exacerbated these multiple housing problems. The research is based on a mixedmethod including the analysis of quantitative data, questionnaire with Syrian refugees, semi-structured in-depth interviews with both Syrian refugees and key actors, and participant observations. Field study of the Önder and Ulubey neighborhoods was conducted between 2017 and 2019. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the findings, and an explanation of their potential for use in the future in urban policymaking and planning processes.
RE-ESTABLISHING THE “HOME”: A CASE ON SYRIANS IN TURKEY
ICNTAD Conference, 2019
The civil war that started in Syria in 2011 have made the migration phenomenon as a current issue both Turkey and the World. No doubt that, every act of migration has a ‘challenge’ in itself. The most important of these challenges is the acquiring of livable place that evolves due to the need for shelter that is one of the most essential needs of humankind. On that point, the task of the people, who specialized in the disciplines of design and architecture, is to draw this contemporary issue through the spatial aspects of migration. Today, the spatial distribution of migration in Turkey is divided into two groups as accommodation centers and cities in general. In the case of emergency, well-intentioned accommodation centers were built as temporal response to this problem to find an immediate solution. It is aimed that meeting the basic human needs in the proper way, but these spaces couldn’t give the feeling of being at home. Instead of staying in the accommodation centers, due to the various difficulties and dissatisfactions experienced in these areas, the process of acquiring a place by migrating to various cities results with establishing a ‘home’. In the process of searching for livable place and re-establishing of the home, individuals past experiences and the role of the new place in memories becomes essential. Therefore, this article focuses on this issue within the scope of the theoretical framework based on ‘acquiring a livable space’, ‘developing sense of belonging’ and ‘establishing a cultural attachment’. This framework will be used for understanding the re-establishment of ‘home making’ process of Syrians living in Sultanbeyli, İstanbul, Turkey within the content of the field study conducted in 2016. Keywords: Migration, livable place, sense of belonging, cultural attachment, home.
Local perceptions on Syrian migration to Turkey: A case study of Istanbul neighborhoods
Migration is not a new phenomenon for Turkey. Before and after the foundation of the Republic, the country has received waves of migration but since the 1970s, migration dynamics of the country has been changing. Turkey has increasingly become a destination country for asylum-seekers and a transit country for irregular migrants. Mass influx of asylum-seekers and refugee movements in Turkey has originated mainly from its neighbours or former Ottoman territories. These movements have included Iranians, Turks of Bulgaria, Iraqis, Chechens, Bosniacs and very recently Syrians.
Refugees of a City: The socio-spatial impacts of those Syrian refugees who arrived in Izmir, Turkey
In the last century, hundreds of thousands of people from the Balkan wars (1912-1913), from the population exchange between Turkey and Greece (1923-1924), from the Balkan countries (1950-1951 and 1978-1979), from Bulgaria (1989), from the Eastern and South-eastern Anatolia Region (the 1990s), and finally from Syria (as of 2012) left their homeland through forced migration and settled in Turkey. One of the cities most affected by this process is İzmir – the third biggest city of the country. Those people who venture migration merely to live and for a safe future deal with an inhumane life such as poverty, pressure, and otherization in the places where they go. There is no doubt that each migration flow also negatively affects the labor processes in cities, the urban infrastructure, and the socio-economic life of the city.
Introduction to Special Issue: Displaced Syrians
Journal of Refugee Studies, 2021
The articles presented here in this special issue on Displaced Syria emerged from a workshop held at The Institute of New York University in Abu Dhabi in March 2019. Its aims were to encourage an examination of the perceptions and aspiration of displaced Syrians and practitioners in hosting countries in the Levant, the Gulf, and in Europe with special attention to the voices of the displaced, their reimagining of home and homeland, and the emerging transnational sense of identity and belonging.