They work up to 12 hours a day to help their families. Labor is part of daily life for many displaced Syrian children in Turkey. Studying is a luxury, and so is play. Julia Hahn reports from Istanbul.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
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Small hands, big profits: Syrian child labor in Turkey
Hard work instead of study: In Turkey there are thousands of Syrian refugee children who aren’t going to school. Many of them work 12-hour days, even though child labor is banned. A visit to a tailor’s workshop.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Work piling up
Khalil is 13-years old and comes from Damascus. He works five days a week in this tailor’s workshop in the basement of a residential house in the working-class Istanbul district of Bagcilar. In this area there are sewing rooms like this one in almost every street. And there are almost always children like Khalil working in them.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Child colleagues
The sewing machines rattle practically non-stop. Four of the 15 or so people working in this tailor’s shop are children, all from Syria. The Turkish textile industry is one of the trades in which a lot of people work illegally. Many are underage children who are taken on as cheap labor, with no papers and no social security.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Yearning for school
"I don’t think about the future," says 13-year-old Khalil, who’s sorting bits of cotton fabric. A young woman is sewing them into women’s panties. Sorting, cutting, sewing — the two are a practiced team. Back home in Syria, Khalil was in third grade; then the war came, they fled, and he hasn’t been back to school since.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Exploiting or helping?
Child labor is forbidden in Turkey. Anyone who employs children under the age of 15 is open to prosecution. The owner of this tailor’s shop knows this, which is why he wants to remain anonymous. "I give the children work so they don’t have to beg. I know it’s forbidden, but on the other hand I’m helping families that wouldn’t have enough to survive otherwise," he says.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
"I hope I can go home"
Musa is also 13. Like many people in this tailor’s workshop, he comes from the province of Afrin in northern Syria, which has a majority Kurdish population. What does he do when he’s not working? "Play football," he says. "I hope there will soon be peace in Syria and we’ll be able to go back home. Then I want to study there and become a doctor."
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Cheap is the priority
Thousands of women’s panties are sewn and packed here every day, in various colors, patterns and sizes. They’re sold in bazaars for a few Turkish lira apiece. The aim is to undercut the Chinese competition. The children here are paid a rate of less than 50 euro cents ($0.60) an hour. Adults earn about twice that.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
A 12-hour day
Aras is 11 and has been working here for four months. Her mother is pregnant; her father has a job of his own in a textile factory. Aras’ day begins at 8 a.m. and often doesn’t finish until 8 p.m. She’s allowed two breaks a day. Aras earns 700 Turkish lira a month — around 153 euros.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Studying is a luxury
Because she works Monday to Friday, Aras can’t go to an ordinary public school. She attends classes at a Syrian aid organization at the weekend, so that at least she’s learning something. Math, Arabic and Turkish are on the curriculum. The teachers themselves are refugees from the war in Syria.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Lessons are time out
More than 70 children aged between four and 18 attend the little Syrian school each day. Sometimes the teachers visit families at home and persuade the parents to send their children to lessons, at least a few days a week, to give them a stab at a better future, and to give them a chance — for a while — to be what they are: children.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
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It's 8 a.m. The muffled clattering of sewing machines can be heard outside on the street. Aras Ali hurries down the stairs into the neon-lit glare to make sure she's on time for the start of her shift. Aras is 11-years old, and the tailor's shop in Istanbul's Bagcilar quarter is her workplace.
The girl works with several other children to make sure the seamstresses are constantly supplied with material. She cuts the colorful fabric with a pair of scissors and sorts it so that individual sections of cloth lie ready for the clattering machines. The women are sewing them into ladies' underwear.
Cut, pile up, cut, pile up. Twelve hours a day, Monday to Friday, for the equivalent of about 150 euros ($180) a month. Four years ago Aras fled the northern Syrian town of Afrin with her family and came to Turkey, first to Gaziantep, then Istanbul.
"Rent, food, the water bill: It's all so expensive here," the girl said. "My mother isn't too well, and one of my sisters is sick, so I have to work to help them." This is the kind of thing you hear from almost every child in this workshop. It's apparent that these are children who have had to grow up much too fast.
The issue is not new. "Child labor has been a structural and very widespread problem in Turkey for a very long time," said Sezen Yalcin, who works for the rights organization Support to Life. "It's even reflected in people's mindsets: Many people think it's not a problem in most of the cases."
Precise figures aren't available, but the number of children conscripted into the workforce in Turkey has risen sharply alongside the number of displaced people admitted to the country since 2011. So far, Turkey has taken in more than 3 million Syrians — more than any other country in the world. No other country has provided a home to so many displaced children: UNICEF estimates that there are 1.2 million living there. But only a few live in the official camps in the southeast of the country near the Syrian border. Most families try their luck in the big cities. As many as 1 million displaced people are estimated to be living in Istanbul alone.
"Most of the children working in Turkey used to attend school back home in Syria, so it's a drastic rupture in their lives and childhoods," Yalcin said. "When they start to work, their childhood ends — forever, or for a while at least."
The law is unambiguous: Child labor is forbidden in Turkey. Anyone employing girls and boys younger than 15 is liable to be prosecuted. Nonetheless, the children work in the textile or agricultural industries, as cutters, or as harvest workers in the fields. Anywhere where the state doesn't look too closely and where social security contributions and occupational safety are ignored.
Too few places
The chance to go to school is a welcome break for many Syrian children in TurkeyImage: picture alliance/NurPhoto/D. Cupolo
The government intends to introduce compulsory preschool and elementary education and has announced that it will provide a place for every displaced Syrian child within the next three years. But that's a long way off. According to the Education Ministry, at least 300,000 Syrian children still have no access to schooling. Aid organizations assume that the actual figure is much higher.
"The public schools' capacity is overstretched," Yalcin said. "In addition, the teachers need to be supported, as they're working with many traumatized kids. It's not enough to provide them with schooling facilities: They also need psychological support."
Many children are exploited because their parents are poor. Aras has two sisters, and her mother is pregnant again. Her father has a job, but he works illegally. Even with the extra money Aras is earning, the family can barely survive. Their two-room apartment is far too small; all five of them sleep in the same room. "We have to send Aras out to work," said her father, Abdurrahman Ali. "In Syria my salary was enough to support us all. But here everything is so expensive; I simply can't do it alone."
Since the start of 2016, Syrians with refugee status have been allowed to apply for work permits in Turkey. In practice, though, that's far from easy. At the start of 2017, according to government estimates, fewer than 1 percent of people eligible had such a permit. Yalcin is all too familiar with the problem: Her organization tries to support refugees when they visit the authorities. "It's very important to understand the root causes and focus on Syrian integration in Turkey," she said. "These families do not have access to decent jobs to sustain their lives and families. It's essential to invest in Syrians' access to the labor market, their capacities for integration into the labor market, in order to build up their resilience."
That would be an important step in removing children such as Aras from the workforce and getting them education. "Of course I'd like to go to school, like all my friends," Aras said. After all, she wants to be a teacher when she grows up.
Small hands, big profits: Syrian child labor in Turkey
Hard work instead of study: In Turkey there are thousands of Syrian refugee children who aren’t going to school. Many of them work 12-hour days, even though child labor is banned. A visit to a tailor’s workshop.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Work piling up
Khalil is 13-years old and comes from Damascus. He works five days a week in this tailor’s workshop in the basement of a residential house in the working-class Istanbul district of Bagcilar. In this area there are sewing rooms like this one in almost every street. And there are almost always children like Khalil working in them.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Child colleagues
The sewing machines rattle practically non-stop. Four of the 15 or so people working in this tailor’s shop are children, all from Syria. The Turkish textile industry is one of the trades in which a lot of people work illegally. Many are underage children who are taken on as cheap labor, with no papers and no social security.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Yearning for school
"I don’t think about the future," says 13-year-old Khalil, who’s sorting bits of cotton fabric. A young woman is sewing them into women’s panties. Sorting, cutting, sewing — the two are a practiced team. Back home in Syria, Khalil was in third grade; then the war came, they fled, and he hasn’t been back to school since.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Exploiting or helping?
Child labor is forbidden in Turkey. Anyone who employs children under the age of 15 is open to prosecution. The owner of this tailor’s shop knows this, which is why he wants to remain anonymous. "I give the children work so they don’t have to beg. I know it’s forbidden, but on the other hand I’m helping families that wouldn’t have enough to survive otherwise," he says.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
"I hope I can go home"
Musa is also 13. Like many people in this tailor’s workshop, he comes from the province of Afrin in northern Syria, which has a majority Kurdish population. What does he do when he’s not working? "Play football," he says. "I hope there will soon be peace in Syria and we’ll be able to go back home. Then I want to study there and become a doctor."
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Cheap is the priority
Thousands of women’s panties are sewn and packed here every day, in various colors, patterns and sizes. They’re sold in bazaars for a few Turkish lira apiece. The aim is to undercut the Chinese competition. The children here are paid a rate of less than 50 euro cents ($0.60) an hour. Adults earn about twice that.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
A 12-hour day
Aras is 11 and has been working here for four months. Her mother is pregnant; her father has a job of his own in a textile factory. Aras’ day begins at 8 a.m. and often doesn’t finish until 8 p.m. She’s allowed two breaks a day. Aras earns 700 Turkish lira a month — around 153 euros.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Studying is a luxury
Because she works Monday to Friday, Aras can’t go to an ordinary public school. She attends classes at a Syrian aid organization at the weekend, so that at least she’s learning something. Math, Arabic and Turkish are on the curriculum. The teachers themselves are refugees from the war in Syria.
Image: DW/J. Hahn
Lessons are time out
More than 70 children aged between four and 18 attend the little Syrian school each day. Sometimes the teachers visit families at home and persuade the parents to send their children to lessons, at least a few days a week, to give them a stab at a better future, and to give them a chance — for a while — to be what they are: children.
