With more and more refugees flooding into Izmir, Turkey’s third largest city has turned from a tourist destination into a huge refugee camp.
Izmir has more than 70,000 registered refugees, and the city has a larger number of non-registered refugees, according to Piril Ercoban, director of Solidarity with Refugees Association, a non-governmental organization assisting the local government to settle refugees.
As most refugees do not have enough money, they stay on the streets.
Ercoban said the refugee crisis is not a new phenomenon.
"The arrivals of refugees into Izmir started in about 2012, which is three years. So, some of them have been living here for three years, some of them are new arrivals of course. When there is a shipwreck, or there is something which gets the attention of the media, only then we realize that, oh, there is a refugee crisis. No, this crisis has been going on for years, so it is not new,” said Ercoban.
For some refugees, Izmir is just a transit stop. They want to cross the sea to Greece and from there move onward into Europe.
Other refugees want to stay in Izmir and try to find work, which is illegal for refugees.
Ayman, a refugee from Damascus, Syria, is one who wants to stay in Izmir. He once worked in Istanbul, but circumstances were far from ideal, so he went to Izmir to try his luck.
"I left Istanbul, because I was not paid there. Bosses always bullied us and tried all ways to underpay us,” said Ayman.
Without a job, refugees have no income. This is one reason why refugees choose to go Europe, said Ercoban.
"There is no access to [the] labor market in Turkey, formally, through work permits. [This] is one of the motivations why refugees in Turkey are leaving Turkey,” said Ercoban.
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