Page 163 - Syrians in Türkiye - Special Report

GRAND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF TÜRKİYE THE OMBUDSMAN INSTITUTION

as the legal age of marriage in our country. Therefore, for this purpose, basic informative
brochures on violence against women, domestic violence, marriage age, official marriage,
and women’s rights are very important, but sufficient numbers of the target population
have not been reached. Therefore, these efforts should be sustained and broadened;
information and educational activities should be organized such as training the trainers
to reach more Syrian women living both inside TACs and in the cities.

Therefore, they should be repeated and generalized, the actualized information
/ education activities should be organized in the form of education of trainers and
organized in order to reach more Syrian women living both in temporary shelters and
in the cities.
Syrian women who are victims of violence can stay in women’s guesthouses as Turkish
citizens can. However, the language barrier is a problem here as well. Women’s
guesthouses are places that provide psychosocial services as well as safe housing for
women. However, because of the lack of interpreters, Syrian women and their children
cannot communicate and thus may be adversely affected psychologically in these places,
rather than finding psychosocial support.

MFSP should take necessary measures and facilitate access to services for those in
vulnerable circumstances; it is also necessary to provide an interpreter in women’s
guesthouses so that Syrian women and children can benefit.

Additionally, there is an Unaccompanied Minors Directive for the MFSP’s Directorate
General of Child Services to aid this most vulnerable groups, but everyone involved in the
NGOs operating in the field has not been informed regarding the process. In addition,
during the process of identifying and referring unaccompanied children, the children’s
interviews are supposed to be conducted by the Provincial Migration Management
Directorate in the most appropriate places. During these interviews a counselor will
be present, and the opinions of the counselor will be taken into consideration while
preparing the interview report. However, we learned that this obligation can only be
fulfilled with the appointment of specialist personnel in other administrations due to
lack of a sufficient number of psychologists or social workers within the Provincial
Migration Management Directorate.

In addition to this issue, the directive that “an age determination report will be prepared
by the Provincial Directorate of Migration Management for the foreigners who do not
have any identity documents showing their ages and whose physical appearances do not
seem the same as the age they declared.”

SYRIANS IN TÜRKİYE SPECIAL REPORT 163