Refugees in Ankara

Precarity and the Sustainability of Livelihoods A Case Study of Refugees in Towns Ankara, Turkey Allan Cooper Dell October 2020 Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………….............……………3 The Author’s Position in Ankara………………………………...….…...……....…...….....................3 Location………………………………………………………………………………….............………..4 Mapping the Refugee Population………………………………………….........................................6 Mixed Experiences………………………………………………………………................……….......6 Precarious Livelihoods..................................................................................................................7 Önder as a Refugee Neighborhood..............................................................................................9 Conclusion...................................................................................................................................11 References..................................................................................................................................12 Appendix A: Methodology............................................................................................................13 Appendix B: Refugees in Turkey.................................................................................................13 Appendix C: Refugees in Ankara................................................................................................15 About the Author.........................................................................................................................16 Cover photo: Ankara Castle with one of the main minibus hubs below (Ulus). Photo by the author. Acknowledgments: I would like to thank the many refugees of Ankara who helped me with my research but who have chosen to remain anonymous. Without their help, this report would not have been possible. refugeesintowns.org Introduction It seems that the lives of the refugees living in Ankara have devolved into a constant negotiation, a duet between voices of welcome and voices of differential treatment from the larger society in Turkey. In this uncertain environment, refugees have been pushed into recurring cycles of starting and stopping of opportunities to sustain their communities. This precarity has pushed them into the bottom of society in terms of space and employment. Turkey currently hosts the highest number of Syrian refugees in the world, which has put significant pressure on Turkey’s economy and institutions, as there is no precedent for such a significant migration in recent Turkish memory (Erdoğan 2019). This pressure has changed the perception of many with regard to the refugees: from people exhausted from the perils of war to a threat to the urban fabric. This case report looks into the lives of primarily Syrian refugees, as well as some Iraqi and Iranian refugees, living in Ankara, focusing on the Önder and Ulubey neighborhoods near the Siteler factory district, and on neighboring districts and the city center. I explore how the informal, precarious nature of the refugees’ status in Ankara manifests in their daily lives and livelihoods. I try to shed light on the difficulty of their lives from their perspective. What is most concerning is the in-between status that often puts them into situations in which they are exploited for their cheap labor. The Author's Position in Ankara I originally come from the United States and have been living in Turkey for more than six years. I have lived close to the primary refugee areas for a long time and am familiar with some of the neighborhood residents. Many local shopkeepers know me, and for this research they were glad to help me and introduce me to others. I was able to build a network of refugees using the “snowball effect:” one person would introduce me to another and so on. In addition, as a foreign student in Ankara I am acquainted with other foreign students here and have met refugees in this way. I primarily spoke Turkish with the refugees. The majority of them had lived in Turkey for six years by the time I spoke with them for this report, and our language skills were at a similar level. However, given that Turkish wasn’t their primary language, I could not be sure that I understood their stories and feelings exactly as they meant them. A few refugees could speak English. I recognize that as a native speaker, there is the possibility for a power imbalance in these interviews, and I always gave interviewees the option of speaking through a translator or in Turkish. Some refugees did not speak either English or Turkish, so friends or other refugees helped translate their responses. What drew me to this topic of insecurity and its effects on livelihood chances is that I have also experienced similar difficulties, although not to the same extent. I don’t think my position restricted my ability to talk honestly with refugees, except in two aspects. Being male often restricted my ability to speak to refugee women about women’s issues, although not always. As a non-Muslim, I was not able to go as deeply into issues relating to religion as I would have liked. Because of these limitations, I focused on my common ground with the refugees, and the topic that they seemed to be the most open to speaking about: informality and its effect on work lives. 3 refugeesintowns.org Location Map data ©2019 Google 4 refugeesintowns.org Önder Neighborhood Map data ©2019 Google The appendices of this report contain more information on refugees in Turkey and Turkish refugee policy. For other examples of Turkish cities integrating refugees, see the RIT report on Sultanbeyli and the RIT report on Izmir. Mapping the Refugee Population Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the second-largest city in the country, with a population of approximately 5.5 million people. Turkey has previously acted as a springboard for refugees to continue on to Europe. However, since the signing of the EU-Turkey deal on March 20, 2016, the route into the EU for the refugees has been mostly blocked (İçduygu and Millet 2016, 13). I was told by many refugees that the path to Europe has recently become much more dangerous and almost impossible to use. Since 2016, the number of refugees in the larger cities of Turkey has increased significantly, and work, as well as housing, has become difficult for refugees to find. Ankara was not one of the main destinations for refugees when they first started coming to Turkey, so it initially received relatively few refugees compared to the other larger cities in Turkey (Istanbul, Izmir, and Bursa, for example). Recently, many refugees have moved to Ankara to find work and housing (Artar 2018), and Ankara has become a home for refugees searching for a longer-term residence, rather than being merely a place from which to move on to somewhere else. 5 refugeesintowns.org In Ankara, most Syrian refugees have moved to the Altındağ Municipality in Northeast Ankara near the Siteler factory district, and specifically to the Önder neighborhood, because it has cheap housing close to factories in Siteler where most refugees work (Bakioğlu 2018, 40; Kavas and Kadkoy 2018). Refugees are also starting to live in the Ulubey district, next to Önder. Within Önder, Selçuk Street has the heaviest concentration of Syrian shops, leading many people to call it Küçük Halep, or “Little Aleppo” (Eraydın 2016, 4). To avoid the difficulty of life in Önder and Ulubey, some Syrians are moving to the central parts of Ankara, specifically Kızılay and Ulus, which have large foreign populations. Mixed Experiences Many Syrians mentioned common cultural bonds with the larger Turkish society, especially with regard to religion. Three Syrian refugees working in a spice shop told me they prefer to live in Ankara rather than in Germany because there are Muslims in Ankara and it is more similar to Syrian culture, as both peoples were in the Ottoman empire for hundreds of years. Turkish residents of Ankara also alluded to this bond during my research. A 34-year-old Syrian refugee said, “Here, there are so many Syrians and mosques. You can see all the mosques. Here, women can wear the veil or headscarf and not be looked at strangely.” A 26-year-old Syrian refugee told me, “We are all Muslim brothers… Muslims are the true brothers.” In my experience, it appears that an informal bond has been forged between the more religiously devout sections of the Turkish population and the refugees. I often observed more conservative Turkish people going out of their way to welcome the refugees and help them with their challenges. Syrian business owners I spoke to said they depended on Turkish helpers, and Turkish people often came by while I was with refugees to check in on them to be sure they had not experienced any problems. The Turkish people I spoke to often mentioned the necessity to help the refugees and welcome them as they are fleeing from the war, saying that they aren’t that different from Turkish people. One respondent stated, “As Syria was historically Ottoman land, we see Syrians like our own people.” However, some Turkish people view the refugees differently and believe it may be better for them not to live in Turkey long term. Some refugees told me about negative experiences. A 29- year-old Iraqi refugee said someone stopped him on the street to say that he hated him because he was foreign. A 33-year-old Iranian refugee woman said that when she and her daughter went to the pazar (bazaar) to buy fruit, “A woman got in a fight with the man who had sold me fruits saying

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