Syrian refugee women are exploited in Turkey

Shaimaa Yahia

Syrian refugee women are being exploited in Turkey because of their need for money. They are forced to get married and sometimes to work in prostitution. Some of the female refugees are rapped.

This encouraged a group of Syrian activists to launch the new hastag “Turkey exploits the refugees”. The activists called on Turkish authorities to stop this exploitation, inviting rights groups to intervene to rescue the refugees.

Turkey had the largest share of refugees, taking advantage of the Syrian crisis in order to get aid and supplies from European countries. After the escalation of the crisis, Turkey’s strategy was to control the situation from behind, and consider its interests first.

According to the Italian research center “OsservatorioBalcani Caucaso”, which monitored the conditions of refugees in Turkey, women make up about half of the Syrian refugees in Turkey. It says they are subjected to large-scale sexual violence, find it difficult to coexist and find a job or communicate in Turkish.

The center adds that women lack good treatment.

Several international media reports have talked about Syrian refugee women. In a report in the British newspaper The Times in 2017, the newspaper noted that women and children are exploited because there are no protectors. They are forced into marriage or prostitution, it said.

Suffering

Human Rights Watch interviewed about a dozen women who had been sexually harassed in the camps. Yhe UN Human Rights Relief Agency reported that more than 800 cases of rape against Syrian women were taking place in Turkish camps.

Reports indicate that gangs are spreading inside the camps to marry girls between the ages of 15 and 25 for between 3,000 to 5,000 Turkish liras per girl. Some of these women, it said, marry for a short time and are divorced. Others are forced into prostitution in Turkey, the agency added.

In 2011, the Turkish daily Idenlik revealed that at least 400 cases of rape of Syrian women took place in Turkey’s Buenoyogun camp.

After medical examinations, around 250 cases of pregnancy emerged, which caused great confusion inside the camp.

Effects

This phenomenon has serious consequences that may threaten the future of refugee women.

The same phenomenon has caused profound problems, especially in border areas, and Turkish divorce rates have risen because men have resorted to marrying Syrian women secretly.