Turkey: Experts urge better education plan for refugees

By Yuksel Serdar Oguz

IZMIR, Turkey (AA) – Academics, teachers and nongovernmental organizations from Turkey, Germany and Syria have called for better strategies to deal with the educational needs of refugees during an international program at the Afacan Youth Center in Turkey's western province Izmir.

One of the main challenges refugees face when they arrive in a foreign country is learning a new language, Radwan Mustafa, who teaches music to refugees at the Syrian Cultural Center in Turkey’s border province of Sanliurfa, where more than half-a-million asylum seekers live, said.

Education and language continue to be the most crucial integration challenge for Syrian people because "it is the only way for children to adapt in society quickly and for adults to improve their skills and being employed," Mustafa told Anadolu Agency Sunday.

Ulrich Gehn, who teaches asylum seekers at a school in Berlin, said language was “the biggest challenge” for pupils in Germany as well.

Gehn’s students come from many parts of the world, including Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkmenistan and Bosnia. “Some children are very intelligent and they can learn German just in a six months period, nonetheless, there are still many who are having so much difficulty to get enough marks,” Gehn said.

After record numbers of asylum seekers poured into Germany, the country began offering special course called “Willkommensklasse” (or welcome classes) in 2015 at regular schools for child refugees who do not speak German and hired 8,500 new teacher for such language lessons.

The children also join after school activities in Berlin to accelerate their adaptation to the society, Gehn added.

- Art as integration tool

Educational specialist Bernhard Stolz, who works as the coordinator at the Humanist Association Germany, said: “The huge influx of Syrian refugees in Turkey and the European countries makes it necessary to improve strategies over the diversity and social inclusion in classes so that the refugee children can be integrated into school and society.”

Experts said one way forward could be the use of theater, art and music to help the people adapt better to the cultural shock of being forced to live in a foreign country.

Stolz shared that he writes short screenplays in which children participate during their school hours. "When they perform in a collective work and they produce something, children can see so much to share with the other," he said.

Mustafa said child refugees at his center in Sanliurfa get music and painting lessons apart from Turkish and English language lessons.

He said basic vocational education was also important. “The adults in between 16 to 46 also get vocational education, sewing and [lessons on how to manage a] house economy,” he said.

After the training, they start working at small firms on textile, clothing, sewing, food services, he added.

Burcu Onenc, a sociologist and social projects manager at the Metropolitan Municipality of Izmir, said around 90,000 Syrian refugees live in Turkey’s third biggest city along the western coast.

“We have renovated a historic building as a design and history workshop, located in a refugee populated area in Kadifekale, to provide regular educational activities to children, including Syrian refugees such as painting, playing instruments, drama,” Onenc said.

Dramatists, professional artists and students from the Dokuz Eylul University’s Department of Performing Arts were also helping children during the lessons, she said.

“As a result of these lectures in the workshop, we developed a project ‘My Puppet, My Story’ in September in which 46 refugee children aged 7 to 10 staged a performance through the art of puppetry as part of a festival, which was followed by local people and Syrian families together in Izmir,” Onenc added.

- Turkey's refugee challenge

The conflict in Syria has now driven more than four million people - a sixth of the country's population - to seek sanctuary in neighboring states, making it the largest refugee crisis in a quarter-century, according to the UN.

Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees in the world, estimated at around 2.7 million people, and has already spent $10 billion on them so far. It is pushing hard to include over a million refugee children in regular schools to save them from becoming a “lost generation”.

In 2016, 150,000 new refugee kids were expected to register at national education programs until the end of the year in addition to last year's 325,000, of whom 75,000 were said to be in public schools and 250,000 others at temporary educational centers, according to the Disaster and Emergency Authority of Turkey.

An estimated 46 percent of child refugees were yet to start their education, and for this reason not only Turkey’s public schools, but also local authorities and nongovernmental organizations have taken the initiative to help Syrian people adapt to Turkish society.