The Roles of Syrian Refugee-run Schools in Turkey: How the Refugees' Autonomy Creates Distinctive Values of Education in Non-camp Settings

Abstract

This study clarifies the roles of Syrian refugee-run schools in non-camp settings, based on the fieldwork in southeastern Turkey during 2013-2015. Turkey, which hosts the majority of Syrian refugees, attempts to absorb non-camp Syrian refugee children to its public schools. Many Syrian refugees, however, send their children to Syrian refugee-run schools. In Syria before the crisis, the vast majority of the school-aged Syrian citizens had access to school, while the educational policy was strongly controlled by the regime. Based on this quantitatively favorable but qualitatively challenging educational situation in Syria, most of Syrian refugees do not question themselves whether to send their children to school, but further they consider how and what kind of school they should choose.

The autonomy of Syrian refugees has been one of the principal features which constitutes the distinctive roles of Syrian refugee-run schools, which is:(1) The evidence of Syrian refugees' capability: the expansion and development of Syrian refugee-run schools exteriorize Syrian people's capable resilience to be productive and to be the agent of change even in the refugee situation. (2) The creation of solidarity: the Syrian refugee-run schools unite the whole school members as a group of people who share the same pain as refugees, which helps Syrian refugees to overcome the social fragmentation due to the crisis. These cognitive roles make a peculiar value of Syrian refugee-run schools, which is the main reason why some Syrian refugee families send their children to refugee-run schools rather than Turkish public schools. These roles, however, are starting to decrease as the autonomy of Syrian refugees is weakened due to the Turkish government's strengthened intervention and surveillance on the refugee-run schools since 2014. Indeed, it will be more convenient to acquire practical benefits for refugee children if they get integrated to the Turkish public education system. However, it is significant to put more focus on the cognitive roles of refugee-run schools because it is the very thing which meet the needs arising from the refugee community.