October 01, 2015•Update: October 01, 2015
ANKARA
Some of the children of Syrian families who fled the civil war in their country are struggling to survive on the streets of Turkey’s western province of Izmir.
While those with better finances live in cheap hotels, the rest struggle to survive in sideways including children, the elderly and the sick.
While playing in a city square, nine-year-old Muhammed Ashkar told Anadolu Agency that he had to come to Turkey with his two brothers and his mother following the death of his father.
Stating that one of his brothers went to Turkey’s northwestern province of Izmit and the other is en route to Germany, Mohammed says he stays in a little hotel with his mother.
“My mother wanders around. Sometimes she gives me 2 or 3 Turkish liras ($0.66-0.99) to buy food... I am happy in Turkey but I need a father. I also wish for shoes and a ball.”
Thirteen-year-old Isa Shaydi, who also escaped the violence in Syria, says he is looking for a job. Speaking to Anadolu Agency in front of a local mosque, he says that he stays with his relatives:
“Sometimes I sleep on the street. I feel cold, but what can I do? I would work if i had a job.”
Abdulkadir Dakar, a Syrian man from Aleppo staying in a mosque yard with his children says the biggest concern of Syrian families is not “drowning in the sea” but being conned and losing the $1,000 fee smugglers charge for illegal crossings.
Dakar says he wants to stay in Turkey but he cannot find a job: “Bombs strike Aleppo every day. Our house is gone, our store is gone. We will go to Germany. We want to cross to Greece on boat. We are scared but we have to. If we stayed in Syria we would die in a bomb strike.”
Syria’s devastating civil war, now in its fifth year, has claimed more than 250,000 lives, according to UN figures, and made the country the world's single-largest source of refugees and displaced people.
Greece, close to Izmir, is a transit route for Syrian refugees trying to reach northern European countries. According to the International Organization for Migration 200,000 Syrian people have reached Greece so far.
