Page 168 - Syrians in Türkiye - Special Report

GRAND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF TÜRKİYE THE OMBUDSMAN INSTITUTION

actors in many aspects of the integration process in Türkiye. It should also be noted
that local governments have played an important role in reducing the problems about
refugees in Türkiye. In this regard, the development and dissemination of special systems
carried out by some local administrations through the municipal unions should be
brought together and centralized through software. Specific support and roles should
be given to the city councils and municipal governments, and they should be enabled to
contribute to the relations between locals and refugees. In this frame, strategy documents
and operational documents should be produced in provinces (and in districts where
necessary). In producing these documents, municipalities, governorships and district
governorships should play a leading role.

In addition, it would be useful to develop and disseminate “family” projects in cooperation
with NGOs and local governments in order to meet the basic needs of Syrian families
that have taken refuge in our country due to the civil war in their country and live
outside TACs in homes rented with their own resources.

In addition to meeting the basic needs of Syrian families such as housing, education,
healthcare, and food, it is also important to ensure that the families do not feel alone in
our country by communicating with them regularly, helping children to have a happier
and healthier environment for their development, it is important to provide the support
of an immaterial “spiritual brotherhood.”

◊ Citizenship and Integration

Naturalization is one of the basic means of ensuring social integration. Naturalization
is regarded as the highest level and most durable solution to social integration by the
UNHCR. In this context, the UNHCR estimates that 1.1 million refugees in the world
in the past ten years have acquired citizenship of the country where they found refuge. 82

It is predicted that a significant portion of the Syrians in Türkiye will stay permanently
in the country because it does not seem possible to establish an atmosphere of peace
and tranquility in Syria in the short term, in addition to other reasons mentioned
in the previous sections of this report. In this case, it is inevitable that the issue of
naturalization appears on the agenda. There are two important points to note here: first,
social, local, economic and spatial integration processes should be emphasized before

82 UNHCR “Solutions” (accessed October 19, 2016); available from http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/solutions.
html. Moreover, Article 34 of the Geneva Convention contains the principles for refugee naturalization.
According to this article, the party States shall make every effort to facilitate the refugees’ assimilation and
naturalization, to expedite the process of naturalization, and to reduce the costs of these operations to any extent
possible.

168 SYRIANS IN TÜRKİYE SPECIAL REPORT