STUCK BETWEEN WAR AND EUROPE: SYRIAN REFUGEES IN TURKEY

The disasters of the Syrian civil war that started in 2011 as a result of the Arab Spring have not been limited to Syria alone; rather they have affected many other countries both in the region and beyond. One of those most impacted in the region is Turkey, an immediate neighbor of Syria, which hosts over three million refugees from the latter. In addition to harming the civilians of the country, the civil war in Syria has caused numerous political, economic, and social problems for other states. It has ruined the everyday lives of the majority of Syria’s citizens, including a substantial number of children, who are innocent victims of this human tragedy. The war has exposed the incompetence and seeming helplessness of the international and regional organizations such as the United Nations and the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation, which claims to be the voice of all the Muslims in the world, to aid in the peace process. The ambitions of the regional and remote states on the ground in Syria attempting to meet their own national interests at the expense of civilian casualties and the greed of the illegal organizations attempting to establish and maintain their own power have also been revealed. This paper will discuss the impact of the war in Syria on its displaced civilians, especially focusing on children, who have sought refuge in Turkey. It will explore political, economic, social, and security effects the war in Syria has had in Turkey, the region, and the World highlighting critical discussion of the policies the Turkish government has implemented to address the refugee crisis. The data used to put this paper together were collected primarily through interviewing, observation, and news from everyday regional media