Parents protest Syrian students in southeast Turkey

KİLİS – Doğan News Agency

DHA photo

Parents of students studying at a newly-opened school in the southeastern Kilis province protested having Syrian students also enrolled in the school’s afternoon session classes.

“The school is our right, we will get it by force,” chanted a group of parents whose children are going to the Mehmet Zeki Taşçı elementary school in Kilis, which operates both morning and afternoon sessions. 

“This school was made for us. We don’t want Syrian children to be educated here. We want our children to be educated. Syrian should go to school where they were educated before,” said parents, adding that there had been problems in the local schools for almost 20 years.   

Arriving at the school to quell the protests, Kilis deputy governor Mehmet Sülün and the provincial education head Abdurrahman Sevgili were both briefed on the incident.   

Kilis, 60 kilometers from the former Syrian commercial hub of Aleppo, is Turkey’s second smallest province. The town’s local population is 106,293, but the number of Syrian residents has risen to 116,714, making it the city with the largest number of Syrian residents in Turkey. The town has recently been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as the city’s supposed “peaceful coexistence” with incoming Syrians is frequently cited by state officials.