Educating Syrian refugees still a challenge in Turkey

ISTANBUL — According to UN statistics, more than 4 million Syrians are in need of education inside and outside their country. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports that some 3 million Syrians have fled their homes to seek safety in Turkey. With that, Turkey has become the neighboring country with the most Syrians fleeing the 5-year-old civil war. Children and youths under the age of 18 constitute half of the Syrian refugees in Turkey. As a result, the education issue has become a key priority there.

Several schools have been established in Istanbul and Gaziantep to help refugee children address the language barrier impeding integration into Turkish society. Some of these schools are funded by the Turkish government, while others were established through personal initiatives and funding.

Al-Monitor spoke by phone with Najdat Waez, a university teacher and founding member of the Syrian Education Commission, a Turkish nongovernmental organization based in Istanbul and with offices in several other cities that focuses on supporting schools for Syrians in Turkey. Waez, who resides in Turkey, said, “I do not have accurate statistics on the number of Syrian schools in Turkey, but there are definitely more than 1,000. The commission has edited and published millions of books and so have the interim government [formed by the Syrian National Coalition] and some relevant organizations in the field. The Syrian curricula are good and capable of graduating a successful Syrian generation if properly edited to remove lessons about the Baath Party.”

Waez further said, “The Qatar Charity, the Abdulkader Sankari Foundation and the interim government have offered their support. School staff mostly consist of volunteer university students, and there are also many professional teachers and administrators who work in the education sector. The Turkish government has been offering broad support and cooperation to this sector.”