Police in Kilis, a province in Turkey’s southeast bordering Syria, are being sent to Arabic language lessons to better deal with the population of Syrian migrants, who now outnumber the local population, Turkish news portal Diken reported on Tuesday.
Seventy police from Kilis will attend the course, which is run in the scope of “You Speak I Understand,” a collaborative project by the local police department and a private educational institute.
İdris Bozkurt, a Kilis police officer involved in the programme, told reporters he believed the course would be useful for ensuring there is no lack of communication with Syrian residents of the area.
Turkish cities bordering Syria host over half of the refugees from that country, Turkish English-language pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper reported last January. Last June the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey was estimated at more than 3.5 million, though many other Syrians living in Turkey are there on non-refugee visas or as undocumented migrants.
Last year Daily Sabah placed the number hosted in Kilis at 131,000 – a thousand more than the city’s local population. In 2016 ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy Ayhan Sefer Üstün nominated Kilis for a Nobel Peace Prize to honour the city’s humanitarian efforts dealing with the large influx from Syria, where conflict has raged since the brutal suppression of a popular uprising in 2011.
More than 10,000 of Kilis’s refugee population are housed in Öncüpınar, where the Turkish government has created a highly developed “container camp” with schools, mosques and play areas for children.
Not all parts of Turkey are as welcoming of the Arabic language: local news sources reported that municipalities had removed shop signs in Arabic in areas of Istanbul and in the southern Turkish province of Hatay.
Nüfusundan fazla Suriyeli barındıran Kilis'te polislere Arapça kursu başladı - Diken
Nüfusundan daha fazla Suriyeli göçmen barındırmasıyla sık sık gündeme gelen Kilis’te, polislere Arapça kurs verilmeye başladı. AA’nın haberine göre kurs Kilis emniyeti ve özel bir eğitim kurumunun işbirliğiyle hayata geçirilen ‘Sen Konuş Ben Anlıyorum’ projesi kapsamında veriliyor. Kursta 70 polis eğitim alacak. Kursta gazetecilere açıklama yapan komiser İdris Bozkurt da Türk vatandaşlarıyla olduğu gibi Suriyelilerle …
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