Reports | 25 05 2020
Winter arrives, and Syrian refugee camps seem to be the places hardest hit by the cold and rain and the cruel rituals of the season; especially given that the infrastructure is, for the most part, debilitated.
The Suleiman Shah camp located in Turkish territory, near the southern city of Urfa, is home to some 30 to 50 thousand Syrian refugees, facing situations that are not much better than those faced by their countrymen in refugee camps in either Jordan or Lebanon.
The camp, which is near the city of Tal Abiad in northern Syria, is considered one of the largest refugee camps in Turkey, extending over vast tracts of land. It is divided into 10 neighborhoods, with each neighborhood comprising circa 450 tents, subdivided into four sectors. There is a Turkish Mukhtar [sector head] for each neighborhood, with four Syrians assisting him.
The refugees live in tents that have become worn, old, and obsolete. According to camp residents, the tents remain unchanged for almost two years now! The camp’s infrastructure is quite dilapidated. Located at the camp’s sides, are the mens’ and women’s bathrooms; as well as laundry rooms most of whose laundry machines are not functioning. The refugees are therefore forced to manually wash their clothes; as they are prohibited from entering any type of washing machines to their tents.
Each neighborhood comprises two mosques, one for men and another for women. The camp also has a hospital and a clinic, a shopping mall, as well as the school which is frequented by a large number of Syrian students—whose attendance is divided into three different shifts.
With the onset of this winter, the location’s problems started to surface. The heating provided by he heaters is quite weak and insufficient, and the refugees themselves having carefully and skillfully covered their tents with tarpaulin notwithstanding; the endurance of such insulation will be put to the test, with the first strong storm hitting the region!
