European cash assistance schemes are helping Turkey manage millions of refugees. In return, the country is expected to stop migrants coming west. But the deal is too one-sided, say the Turkish authorities

At a supermarket in Gaziantep, Huda is shopping for eggs, rice and bread to feed her four children. She is using the money left over after paying the rent.



A Syrian refugee in Turkey, she no longer has to queue for food handouts or at soup kitchens. Huda now has her own debit card loaded with funds as part of a European-funded unconditional cash transfer programme.

She is among 1.25 million refugees across Turkey - of which 90% are Syrians- to benefit and has been on the scheme for four months.

“First I pay the rent and utilities, which is around 450 Turkish lira (£80.32) a month and then I buy the basics like bread and sugar,” she explains, placing items carefully in the trolley.

The shop has Syrian bread alongside Turkish – a symbol of two cultures in a city where refugees now make up a quarter of the population.

Turkey hosts more refugees than any other country, including 3.7 million Syrians. The EU-funded cash assistance programme is designed to help a nation that is creaking under the strain.



But Europe’s largest humanitarian aid effort to date did not come without strings attached.

The Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) is the flagship of 58 programmes under the €3bn (£2.6bn) cash injection which followed the deal in March 2016 that Turkey would clamp down on irregular migration to Europe in return for help in looking after refugees within its borders.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Refugees have their monthly allowance loaded on to Kizilay cards. Photograph: Sinan Çakmak/WFP

While Turkish-EU relations remain tense around funding, aid workers on the ground are working with the state authorities and hailing a revolutionary model in the way cash can be delivered on a large scale.

Within nine months of its inception in December 2016, the project was scaled up to reach 1 million people. A monthly allowance is loaded on to debit cards – Kizilay cards – which can be used in any cash machine and in shops.

Eligible families receive 120 TL (£21.42) a month per person, meaning a couple with four children would typically get 720 TL.

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“It covers 75% of our needs but there has to be someone in the family working to cover the rest,” says Huda, from Aleppo. Her husband earns what he can collecting recyclable rubbish while their 11-year-old son works at a factory each day before school where he is learning Turkish – many children in struggling families have to leave school to find work.

“I’d like him to stop working now we have the extra money coming in,” says Huda. “Our lives are better now we do not have to borrow money and we aren’t always worrying about someone banging down our door to demand the rent.”

A complementary project run by the UN children’s agency, Unicef, using the same Kizilay card, pays a top-up to households where children meet 80% school attendance. But once a household meets the criteria for the ESSN – single parents, couples with three or more children, the over 59s and households where there is disability – there are no conditions attached.

Cash transfer schemes have been likened by critics to “exporting the dole” amid concerns the money could be misused. But emerging data shows it can improve school attendance and health outcomes for beneficiaries.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Turkey hosts the most refugees in the world. Photograph: Sinan Çakmak/WFP

The World Food Programme (WFP) has been delivering ESSN in a four-way partnership with the European Commission, the Turkish Red Crescent and government.

“The big myth when the humanitarian world moved into cash was that it would all be spent on cigarettes and alcohol,” says Jonathan Campbell, Turkey’s deputy country director at WFP. “But the vast majority of people are very responsible. They are not going to spend money on luxury items and let their children go hungry.

“By giving cash, people have more choice and can barter – it’s a culture of bargaining.”

There are other advantages to giving cash rather than food – the dignity in enabling people to decide how to best meet their own needs, and the money saved on transport and warehouse storage.

It covers 75% of our needs but there has to be someone in the family working to cover the rest. Huda

But the logistics have not been trouble free. For a household to be eligible, family members must be officially registered as refugees and register their address separately with the civil registry. This prompted thousands of previously unregistered refugees to come forward, creating a bureaucratic headache for the Turkish authorities. The country’s ATMs also had to be programmed to have Arabic as a language option.

Despite the teething problems Campbell insists the ESSN is one of the most efficient aid programmes in the world.

“This year we have €650m funding and we can guarantee that a minimum of 87.5% will go into the pockets of refugees.”

Most of Turkey’s refugees live in villages and cities, with just 10% living in its 21 refugee camps.

Sixty miles north of Aleppo, the border city of Gaziantep is home to nearly 2 million people, 500,000 of whom are refugees. Many arrived five or six years ago and have exhausted all their assets, so survive on casual work and basic government assistance.

Nahla, a widow living with six of her nine children, is eligible for the ESSN and receives 720 TL a month. Nahla’s eldest son is not registered as a refugee and instead has found work as a plasterer, contributing his earnings of 250 TL a week.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cash assistance covers Nahla’s rent and bills. Photograph: Sinan Çakmak/WFP

“Yousef follows the same trade as his father,” explains Nahla, gesturing to a photo of her late husband on the otherwise bare walls. He had been returning home from work in May 2013 when he was killed in an airstrike.

“Our house was damaged in the bombings. The children were completely traumatised so we had to leave,” Nahla, 49, explains.

She does some casual work from home for a slipper factory to help buy food but cash assistance covers their rent and bills.

“Everything you see in the kitchen is from neighbours,” she says. “They know I’m a widow so they bring me vegetables and food, but I’m not very sociable because I do not speak the language.”



While Nahla’s children can already exchange a few words with the kids next door, their mother’s prospects of integration are less hopeful.



During a recent trip to Brussels, Gaziantep’s mayor, Fatma Şahin criticised the cash programme saying it would make more sense for the assistance to be conditional on women undertaking vocational training or sending their children to school.

“If you give them cash directly, it doesn’t solve their real problems,” she told Euractiv.

Şahin, who was elected mayor in 2014 and was nominated for the 2016 Nobel peace prize for helping Syrian refugees, adds: “Rather than this card system, different segments of the refugee population should be channelled into different projects.”

She says if it were not for Turkey “people would be drowning in the sea, or on an annual basis 2.5 million people would be flowing into Europe”.

But she claimed the EU had only contracted €2.8bn of the €3bn pledged, and that the funding was not sent “through the right channels”.



The actual amount disbursed to date is understood to be €1.85bn, according to the EC.

“We are on the humanitarian side of a political bargain and it is now much more difficult for refugees to move around Turkey,” explains Nils Grede, WFP country director.

“With Turkey hosting 3.8 million refugees the cost of having 10% more children in school and the pressures on hospitals is huge. The impact of housing shortages and rents going up all cause potential tensions,” Grede says.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nahla’s children in Selimiye neighbourhood in Gaziantep. Photograph: Sinan Çakmak/WFP

“Our programme is modelled on the social assistance the Turks receive. The transfer value was based on what Turkish families get so refugees would not feel better or worse off.”

The fact the cash can be injected back into the local economy has also helped smooth relations with the host community.

Supermarket owner Abdullah Genc says 15% of his custom is from Syrian clients.

“It’s a burden for the state but refugees have helped our profits,” he says.

A local pharmacist agreed the refugee population has boosted business, but adds: “Free healthcare for Syrians is a sensitive subject among poor Turks who feel worse off.”

If a refugee is employed formally they cannot access the programme, but those who are independently wealthy but not working can still, in theory, meet the criteria.

If you give them cash directly, it doesn’t solve their real problems. Fatma Şahin

Grede says basing the criteria on demographics rather than available resources meant the scheme could be scaled up quickly to help those in need - but that in 2018 households would be visited and assessed in more detail.

So far the inclusion error remains low with just 1.6% of households excluded from the programme following the verification process.

Jane Lewis, the European Commission’s humanitarian chief in Ankara, says: “We know of a couple of people living in towers in Istanbul and they will be removed as we carry out home visits. We are more worried about those who should be on the programme but aren’t.”

Having the programme anchored in government systems makes it more efficient than cash assistance in other countries where refugees could have up to 14 cards for different purposes.

Using a single platform means other donors can contribute or the authorities can take it over using a state budget. The demographic data of the refugees is already part of the Turkish welfare system. Lewis says the model could be rolled out in other countries including Jordan and Lebanon.

With the current budget due to run out in the first quarter of 2019, the future of the programme depends on a second cash pledge from Europe.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ahmed and Rukeyye say they can now afford rent for their apartment due to the cash payments they have been receiving. Photograph: Sinan Çakmak/WFP

“We need to be very responsible about what happens next,” says Lewis.

“This is a group of highly traumatised people who will need the support of Turkey and Europe for many years.”

Many Syrians including Ahmed, 30, and his wife Rukeyye, 25, are already contemplating their future in Turkey.

The couple fled here with their three children in 2014 when Isis took over a village near their home, north of Aleppo. Their youngest daughter was born in Gaziantep eight months ago.

After moving five times they now occupy the ground floor of a shared property and can afford the rent thanks to the cash payments they have been receiving.

“Before we lived in a shop and then a basement with no windows so a house like this is hard to find. Landlords prefer not to rent to Syrians,” Ahmed explains.

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While things have improved for the family, life is not easy. Friends helped Ahmed find casual work in the construction industry but he has struggled with the language while Rukeyye rarely leaves the house.

Despite their difficulties the family find it hard to imagine a time they will be able to move home.

“I spent all my life savings building our house in Syria. But we heard from relatives it was destroyed by shelling,” Ahmed explains.

“If the current situation continues our hope is our children will be integrated into Turkish life.”

Already they are making strides. His six-year-old daughter Orjwan, says: “I have Turkish friends, we play hide and seek. I do not speak Turkish but I understand some words.”

Soon she will join her elder sister who is enrolled in first grade at a Turkish school.

“She studies everything in Turkish. She does not understand everything but she is learning fast,” says Ahmed.