Turkey's aid organizations have exerted efforts to support educational activities and provide humanitarian aid to Syrians in the northern provinces of the war-torn country.
Yesevi Aid Movement brought 150 students back into school by repairing a primary school located in the town of Bulbul, in Afrin.
Some 150 students in the village will be trained in the school which was renovated and named after Eren Bülbül, a youngster who was killed by PKK terrorists in the Maçka district of the Black Sea province of Trabzon in 2017.
Students began the second semester with a clown show performed by Turkish volunteers. Following the program, various gifts and stationery were distributed to students.
The Yesevi Aid Movement is also renovating an orphanage and cultural center in the city. The organization previously reconstructed a school located in the town of Meryemin, east of Afrin.
Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch on Jan. 20, 2018, to remove terrorists from northwestern Syria's Afrin. The Turkish military and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) entered Afrin town center and liberated it from terrorists on March 18. Following the operations, Turkey has been also been involved in efforts to rebuild the towns' infrastructure, as well as health and education institutions.
Schools are being renovated and a hospital is being built. Turkey also helps local people build olive oil facilities in the town where agriculture is the main source of income for residents. Tens of thousands of people who fled terrorist groups in Afrin returned to the town after Operation Olive Branch. In a recent development, Turkey's postal directorate is also preparing to open a post office in Afrin.
Another Turkish nongovernmental organization, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (İHH), distributed 2,360 food packages to Syrians live in northern Syria's Jarablus, Bizaah, Ahtarin and Azaz provinces.
The food packages contain basic needs including sugar, flour, legumes and oil, and packages distributed will benefit around 15,000 people.
"The primary assistance we provided in the month of January is food aid as food is the primary need for all people," Ali İmran Durman, a press unit member working for IHH told Anadolu Agency.
Durman added that the food packages meet the needs of a family of six people for a month. Since 2001, IHH has been providing food, health and housing assistance in Syria.
Turkey's efforts in northern Syria to establish stability, including successful counterterrorism operations, have enabled 260,000 Syrians living in the country to return home to areas liberated from terrorist groups.
