Türkiye: making a difference for refugees

Refugee crises are among the greatest humanitarian challenges of our time. The United Nations estimates that some 3.6 million people from Syria alone have fled years of violence. A Türkiye interior ministry figure indicates that one million of the refugees in Türkiye are between the ages of 4 and 17. 

School? Language? Culture? How to help them adapt? Where to start? 

The Olympic Refuge Foundation has launched a multiparty project now underway in several Turkish cities. It aims to use sports a pathway to reach more than 37,000 children and young people. Other key stakeholders: the state ministry of youth and sports, UNHCR Türkiye, the Turkish National Olympic Committee and a Turkish NGO, the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM).

Common sense: to bring this many parties together requires confidence the initiative will produce results. 

In this case, where could such confidence come from? 

The story behind the story: a brilliant final thesis from the MEMOS XX class of the executive masters’ programme in sports organisation management supported by Olympic Solidarity. Founded in 1995 and enjoying strong IOC support ever since, the programme is available to managers from a wide range of sports organisations. Olympic Solidarity assists MEMOS students endorsed by their NOC by covering the tuition fee and providing a participation subsidy.

How often does it happen that a paper makes the leap from academia to real life? This one did.

Written by the Turkish scholar and academic, Tuğçe Örsoğlu, the 44-page thesis, “Reaching beyond the border: Syrian refugee children and Olympic education,”, details the impact of a far-smaller programme in the years 2016-2020 in the south-central Turkish city of Gaziantep, roughly 100 miles north of Aleppo, Syria, a major refugee waypoint.

There, the Turkish Olympic Committee, joined by the city and, ultimately, the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), which worked with the Bonn-based German development agency, GIZ, joined local and Syrian children in karate, taekwondo, wrestling, basketball, volleyball, badminton, gymnastics, judo and archery. 

The final year saw 200 Syrian and 300 Turkish kids working with 10 trainers. 

As Örsoğlu, who would go on to earn her doctorate from Ankara’s Gazi University on the topic of refugees and Olympic education, would write in her MEMOS master’s thesis: “…Syrian children who had looked nervous and shy began to smile, in time.” And: “… a slogan was adopted for the programme: ‘From crying faces to smiling faces.’”

Can every crying face be turned into a smile? Probably not. With millions displaced, is reaching thousands, as the authorities are seeking to do now, a panacea? Of course not. A brutal reality: the earthquake in Türkiye in 2023 all but destroyed Gaziantep. 

For all that: any spark of goodness in our fragile world is worth pursuing, right? 

The ministry knew the Gaziantep run had produced concrete results, and the Turkish Olympic Committee knew about her and her work. “It was a really good project,” Örsoğlu said. Now comes a scaled-up variation: across the country, several cities.

Örsoğlu said, referring to the Gaziantep project, “It was good for the children and for their families. The families were scared. They are scared of something bad happening, something their children might face in Türkiye because they don’t know each other, Turks and Syrians. Then their children came together, and they saw. Everyone saw. Their children were safe in the sports hall.”