Turkey's immigration authority provides nonstop services through its Foreigners Communication Center (YİMER), in order to ease life in the country for foreigners.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Aydın Keskin Kadıoğlu, the head of the immigration authority's adaptability and communication department, said that since the beginning of 2019, the immigration authority has escalated its efforts for foreigners and YİMER, which can be reached by calling 157, is one of its major achievements. He further added that YİMER is the right place to receive the most correct information. "When you call YİMER, you can receive an answer to the questions that you might have. We are providing services in six languages, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, German, English and Russian," he underlined, adding that they want people to benefit from such a service.
"There are false facts in Turkish society [regarding the refugees]. We see this most obviously in social media. We're sorry to see to these things," said Kadıoğlu, adding that as the immigration authority, they are doing their best to correct these false facts.
"From irregular migration to international protection, from international protection to the victims of human trafficking and especially the hardest point of adaptation, we have lots of things that we have been working on. It saddens us to see that all these works are being interpreted in a wrong way on social media," Kadıoğlu expressed, recalling the phrase that "people are the enemy of the unknown."
"Which is why we are working on informing people in the right way," he said.
In this respect, the immigration authority has prepared a booklet on false facts on Syrian refugees in the country. "There are false facts, such as the crime rate of Syrians is high, they are entering universities without any exam, they receive rent, food and other monetary support, they receive a salary from the state, they get houses from the Housing Development Administration (TOKİ). We are handing out booklets to inform the society about such misinformation," Kadıoğlu said, adding that other work has been on going to inform Syrians themselves about their own rights in Turkish society.
"Because our Syrian brothers should also know what their rights are," he said.
Another initiative undertaken by the immigration authority is "Live in Turkey," where the foreigner can receive information on how life works in Turkey, from societal rules to state structure – this will go live in a month.
Interior Ministry figures show that the number of refugees in Turkey was 4.2 million in 2017 and is now 4.9 million. Ankara has spent nearly $40 billion so on the refugees, while it has only received about 6 billion euros of support from the international community.
