Local officials and their Turkish sponsors present the construction of housing as a humanitarian action aimed at helping displaced families.
The Turkish NGO Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) says it has supported the construction of more than 18,000 residential units in northwestern Syria since 2019.
The Turkish Lira has become the main currency and Turkey has even contributed to the establishment of hospitals, post offices and schools that teach the Turkish language.
“More than 50,000 people have moved into the houses we have built so far,” IHH secretary general Durmus Aydin told AFP.
According to him, 100,000 people will be housed by April in 24,325 houses built by IHH.
The latest residential complex was completed this month near Bizaah, 3 km east of al-Bab, with the support of the Turkish government’s Disaster and Emergency Management Agency ( Afad), according to local officials.
The Bizaah housing complex was built on land managed by a local council with “the full cooperation of our Turkish brothers”, says Hussein al-Issale, who is overseeing the resettlement of displaced families.
“These houses are temporary shelters for our displaced brothers”, adds this local official.
“We want to go home”
While some displaced families are grateful to Turkey, many others have only one goal, to return home and claim that these houses do not compensate for what they have lost.
Like Mohammad Haj Moussa, 38 and father of four, who has lived in camps since war forced him from his hometown in Idlib five years ago,
For him, life between four concrete walls is only “slightly different” from living in a tent.
“We are lying to each other,” he says. Because, what “we want (is) a (permanent) solution. We want to go home”.
Not far from there, another displaced person, Ahmed Mustafa Katouli, affirms that “these houses do not compensate for what we have lost”, says this man displaced by the fighting in Aleppo ten years ago.
“We lost homes, lands and martyrs”, but following all the time spent in tents “I have to live here.”
