The Dom The Other Asylum Seekers from Syria Report.pdf

Kırkayak Kültür, 2017

This report is prepared in the scope of the “The Rights of Dom and Other Related Minorities from Syria Seeking Asylum in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey Project” to determine the living conditions, types of being exposed to exclusion and discrimination and other problems faced by The Dom the “Other” Asylum Seekers from Syria who took refuge in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey. The Dom are composed of peri-patetic communities whose roots are based in India and who are named by Middle Eastern Societies as Nawar, Gypsy, Zott, Ghajar, Bareke, Gaodari, Krismal, Qarabana, Karaçi, Abdal, Ashiret, Qurbet, Mitrip, Gewende, Dom, Abdal, Tanjirliyah, Haddadin, Haciye, Albaniant, Halebi, Haramshe and Kaoli. In our day Dom communities live almost in all countries such as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates.

This report is prepared in the scope of the “The Rights of Dom and Other Related Minorities from Syria Seeking Asylum in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey Project” to determine the living conditions, types of being exposed to exclusion and discrimination and other problems faced by The Dom the “Other” Asylum Seekers from Syria who took refuge in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey. The Dom are composed of peri-patetic communities whose roots are based in India and who are named by Middle Eastern Societies as Nawar, Gypsy, Zott, Ghajar, Bareke, Gaodari, Krismal, Qarabana, Karaçi, Abdal, Ashiret, Qurbet, Mitrip, Gewende, Dom, Abdal, Tanjirliyah, Haddadin, Haciye, Albaniant, Halebi, Haramshe and Kaoli. In our day Dom communities live almost in all countries such as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates. Dom community are form the peri-patetic communities living with the other publics in the Middle Eastern Geography. Peri-patetic communities are nomadic-semi nomadic communities who produce work tools for the publics they live together and most of the time they become the bearer of the oral and musical cultures. They perform traditional crafts such as dentistry, circumcision, traditional healing, animal training, ironwork, metalwork, basketry, strainer making, leatherwork and in return of serving these crafts they take food from the publics they live together. Especially during the last 50 years, together with the development of relations of production and industry since they cannot perform their traditional crafts, the communities started to a great extent to waste and refuse collection, seasonal work and daly work which are most of the time performed in the informal sector. The environment of war, conflict and violence continuing in Middle East for many years led to the displacement of the Dom society. The recent civil war and contested period in this geography exposed the Dom living in the Middle East to violence and forced migration even though they did not take a part in the war. The contested environment experienced especially in Syria led the Dom living in this country to take shelter in neighboring countries. The Dom who took refuge in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey are discriminated and excluded in these countries. During the recent years the conflicted political and social life, civil war and the contested processes in Middle East started to make the lives of these people difficult day by day. After their spaces of migration, neighborhoods and houses were appropriates these communities who passed to settled life were forced to nomadic life once again.

As of 2016, the civil war in Syria has entered its h year, and the number of Syrian migrants in Turkey, which has constantly risen since 2011, has approached 3 million according to o cial statements by the UN High Commission for Refugees and the government of the Republic of Turkey.1 While around 260,000 refugees are living in the 26 temporary accommodation centres in 10 di erent provinces, the remaining 2,484,000 are located throughout the 81 provinces of Turkey. The provinces with the largest populations of Syrian nationals are Şanlıurfa, İstanbul, Hatay, Gaziantep and Adana, in that order.2 Those arriving from Syria generally work in agriculture in the eastern regions of Turkey; besides agriculture they are employed in manufacturing, construction and services sectors. The Development Workshop’s June 2016 publication titled The Report and Map on the Present Situation of Foreign Migrant Workers in Migrant Seasonal Agriculture in Turkey has demonstrated the rising presence of Syrians in agricultural production and the migrant seasonal agricultural workforce.3 The entry of Syrians into the seasonal agricultural labour force has caused competition between the poor, greater discrimination, and human rights violations. Syrian Doms are another fragile group group of migrants in Turkey. In addition to the general hardship experienced by all Syrian nationals, they are also discriminated against by the authorities, the local population and other Syrian migrants due to their ethnic origins and way of life, and have almost no access to humanitarian aid.

The Migration Conference , 2018

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Kırkayak Kültür, 2021

“ We have seen it all…" Examining the Experiences of Syrian Dom and Abdal Refugees in Accessing Fundamental Rights and Services in the Temporary Protection System in the Context of Discrimination" “We have seen it all... ” Assessment of Syrian Dom and Abdal Refugees' Experiences of Accessing Fundamental Rights and Services in the Temporary Protection System in the Discrimination Context” aims to point out the access of Syrian Dom and Abdal refugees to fundamental rights and services in the Temporary Protection System and to show how the members of Syrian Dom and Abdal communities experience these. Therefore, the aim is to contribute to the voice of Syrian Dom and Abdal refugees.

Borders and Limitations, Institute for Migration Studies, Lebanese American University, 2022

The Dom are an ethnic minority group who currently reside in several countries throughout the MENA region, including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt and Turkey. Historians and linguistic theorists have found that the Dom's language, referred to as Domari, derives from an Indo-Aryan language. They insist that the Dom are descendants of a group of itinerant ethnic groups, called the Roma (Romani) people and Lom people. The supposed ancestors of the Dom, the Domba were said to have left the Indian subcontinent sometime between late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Misunderstood and complicated, the Dom have been present in the MENA region for over one thousand years. Most information about them is derived from their language. Both Roma and Domari comprise words borrowed from other languages, reflecting a rich history of migration through the region and elsewhere. Beyond this, little of their origin is known or consented to by historians and scholars. People throughout the MENA refer to the Dom as "Gypsies", "Ghajar" or "Nawar" a word that has evolved into a derogatory term, connoting someone who is "uneducated" and "uncivilized".

The Dom of Syria: The " other " refugees I believe that the current conditions of globalization require us to debate the rights of individuals from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, that is, the rights of the " others. " I will draw on Kant's essay entitled " Perpetual Peace " to strengthen my argument. Today, as we seem to stand on the verge of global war, the current conditions of globalization correspond to a reality which spans from the " European Constitution " to the increased blurriness of the century-old borders in the Middle East. This reality also points to humanity's progress towards " days of perpetual peace. " On the one hand, we witness and experience how the masses " longing for spring " took to the squares to bring down the remnants of dilapidated, dictatorial nation states; and how the bloody retreat of those uprisings evolved into medieval barbarism. Women are now sold on slave markets due to ethnic, religious and political/ ideological differences, children's dead bodies hit the shores of the Mediterranean, massacres and executions are broadcast live, radicals raised in the Western education system organize serial killings with cold blood in the neighborhoods in which they used to live. On the other hand, the defeated masses, with their hopes exhausted, abandon their homes and lands to reach the borders of Europe, a place they had thought to be the homeland of the concepts of " rights and equality " , and come face to face with the real Europe. On the one hand, the civilized world drops tons of bombs every day on this region, on the other, another region that had lifted its internal borders and wrote equality and justice on its flag confronts the " other. " The perception of Gadjos In his articles on being the " other " , living with the " other " and opening up a space for the " other " between different cultures, Jürgen Habermas suggests that " Embracing is not turning on oneself and closing oneself to the other. Embracing the other means keeping the social

Kırkayak Kültür , 2018

In the last 50 years, Dom communities living in Middle East had started to settle in “migration locations” at peripheral parts of cities, where they had been camping for centuries, due to shrining market of their occupations which require a nomadic lifestyle. The war, conflict, and violence continuing in the region for years displaced Dom communities. Although they had never been a party to any war, Dom communities living in Middle East were subjected to violence and forced migration due to civil wars and conflicts continuing in this region for decades. Especially the conflict environment in Syria forced Dom communities and other peripatetic communities living in this country to seek asylum in neighboring countries. Such communities seeking asylum in countries such as Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey have became disadvantaged within migration programs and policies in these countries compared with mainstream refugee groups and have been subjected to discrimination and exclusion due to anti-Roma attitudes. Defenseless and marginalized by both the host state and community and mainstream refugees in countries where they live, these communities experience problems related to access to services and are discriminated and excluded by society. Civil insurrections referred to as “Arab Spring”, which started in 2010, the political and social change in Middle East countries, civil war, and conflict environment have made their lives more and more difficult. Having adopted a sedentary life after their migration locations, neighborhoods, and homes where they had been living for centuries were seized, these communities are now forced back to a nomadic lifestyle.