Executive Summary
Ten years after the start of the civil war in Syria and the mass forced migration to neighboring countries, there are almost 3.6 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey, as the country has become the world’s largest refugee-hosting country in the world (UNHCR, 2020). While the overwhelming majority of Syrian refugees are still under temporary protection, a precarious legal status defined by temporality and insecurity, it is clear that the presence of Syrian refugees in Turkey is far from temporary.
While the increasing number of the Syrian community in Turkey promotes protection and integration efforts of the international and national civil society actors, it also draws attention for research purposes. Both organizational and academic research focuses on different aspects of forced migration, such as labor participation, schooling, and integration, meanwhile seeming to neglect the heterogeneous character of the refugee community, such as age, gender, social class, and ethnicity. However, for more accurate and sustainable processes of policy making on protection and integration, it is essential to understand and address intersectional factors that shape the everyday experiences and struggles of the concerned community.
In this sense, gender emerges as a particularly important concept to understand the refugee communities’ dynamics, capacities, vulnerabilities, and strategies. While gender analysis of the refugee community in Turkey relatively found its place in the literature (see Freedman, Kıvılcım and Baklacıoğlu, 2017; KADEM, 2018; ASAM, 2018; Özden and Ramadan, 2019; Danış and Biehl, 2020; Körükmez, Karakılıç and Danış, 2020), it still requires further research. Collection of gender segregated data and analysis of the gender dynamics of a given community is also essential for international and local civil society actors in order to come up with tailor-made policies and programmes targeting various intersectional groups among the refugee community. Integration of our pre-existing knowledge on gender-based power structures, dynamics, and inequalities into policy making and programming in every step of the way is crucial for the success of gender responsive and/or transformative protection and humanitarian efforts.
The central aim of this study is to focus on a more gender-responsive approach to child protection and to identify and analyze different gender-based needs, capacities, vulnerabilities, and strategies to introduce a more intersectional approach to better address the protection needs of different groups of refugee communities in the designated cities of Antep, Urfa, and Mardin. To support this objective, a closely related aim is to explore the ways in which forced migration effects gender dynamics of the refugee community to better understand the gendered constructions, norms, relations, expectations, and aspirations that shape the experiences of refugee children and youth. With this purpose, we have conducted qualitative research with mixed methods involving the participation of 76 informants including AAR Japan staff and beneficiaries in three cities, Antep, Urfa, and Mardin. All situated in the Southeast of Turkey, bordering Syria, particularly Antep and Urfa, these locations are among the 10 most refugee hosting cities in the country.
To support this objective, a closely related aim is to explore the ways in which forced migration effects gender dynamics of the refugee community to better understand the gendered constructions, norms, relations, expectations, and aspirations that shape the experiences of refugee children and youth. With this purpose, we have conducted qualitative research with mixed methods involving the participation of 76 informants including AAR Japan staff and beneficiaries in three cities, Antep, Urfa, and Mardin. All situated in the Southeast of Turkey, bordering Syria, particularly Antep and Urfa, these locations are among the 10 most refugee hosting cities1 in the country.