Turkey: Over 100,000 foreign children get financial aid

By Merve Yildizalp

ANKARA

Turkish Family and Social Policy Ministry has provided a total of 25.6 million Turkish liras ($6.6 million) of financial aid to 136,000 foreign children since October 2017.

The ministry has been providing financial aid to deprived families within Turkish communities since the beginning of 2000s in the scope of "National Conditional Cash Transfer for Education Programme".

Separately, the Conditional Cash Transfer for Education Programme is being implemented for the foreigners as well with the support from European Union, UNICEF, Turkish Red Crescent, National Ministry of Education and Family and Social Policy Ministry.

The program, which began on May 2017 and aimed to increase enrollment rates and establish equal education opportunities for the Syrian and other refugee children in Turkey, will continue its financial aid in upcoming year as well.

"We do not separate the children of those families, who took refuge in our country due to war and domestic conflicts, from our own children," the Family and Social Policy Minister Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya told Anadolu Agency.

The ministry devotes efforts to provide the "best" education and social opportunities to the refugee children in the country, Kaya said.

She underlined the significance of refugee children obtaining education and stressed that the "3+3 billion euros of financial support must immediately be provided" by the European Union.

Ankara and the EU reached a deal in 2016 aimed at discouraging irregular migration to Europe through the Aegean Sea and it included a €6 billion ($6.9 billion) aid package to help Turkey care for millions of refugees hosted in the country.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the fighting and more than 10 million displaced, according to the UN.

Turkey hosts 3.2 million Syrian refugees, more than any other country in the world.