Turkey's Refugee Workforce
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Millions of Syrians, including children as young as 10, are employed illegally in Turkish factories and shops - working long hours, underpaid and without insurance or legal rights. There is talk of an entire lost generation of child workers, missing out on school because their families need them to earn.
Ed Butler reports from Istanbul, where he meets a family of garment factory workers who say they are paid less than Turkish colleagues for their 10-12 hour days. He also meets some highly educated professionals, who have been reduced to taking on much lower skilled work since fleeing the civil war in their home country.
But does their plight evoke pity among their Turkish hosts? Or resentment that cheap Syrian labour is undercutting their own wages? And what can be done to improve lives, and get their kids out of work and back into school? Ed visits the Turkish charity Hayata Destek (Support to Life) to get some answers.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: A young Syrian refugee in Istanbul; Credit: Raddad Jebarah/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Business Daily here on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:04.9 | My name's Ed Butler, and today, after important elections here in Turkey, |
| 0:10.4 | I've come to the country's biggest city, Istanbul, |
| 0:13.4 | looking at the situation for those who mostly didn't have a say in the vote, |
| 0:18.1 | the country's huge population of Syrian refugees. |
| 0:24.6 | You are a machine. You can't speak, you can't talk, you can't drink, you need to work. |
| 0:28.7 | Because they earn so little, oftentimes the children are required to work so that kids do not go to school. |
| 0:35.2 | Life is really hard and people are hardly accepting us. |
| 0:38.6 | They should go back to their country because our young people need jobs, but these people |
| 0:44.6 | take those jobs. |
| 0:46.2 | All that to come on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:01.7 | Last week, we looked at the economic challenges that are affecting voters in Turkey ahead of the elections here. |
| 1:05.0 | But there is another huge issue facing the country. |
| 1:10.2 | Syrians, there are three and a half million of them who now call Turkey their home, and that's 20% of Syria's |
| 1:12.8 | entire pre-war population. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have been successful in last |
| 1:19.3 | Sunday's vote, but integrating those recent immigrants seems like a daunting task. As it is, nearly |
| 1:26.6 | all of the Syrians live, not in camps, |
| 1:29.6 | but in cities like this one, battling to get by in the poorer suburbs. |
| 1:33.8 | So what's their life like? |
| 1:35.4 | And what effect is their arrival having on the local population? |
| 1:41.2 | You've got to take your shoes off, mate. |
| 1:43.6 | Hello. Salam al-a-a-a-a-com. shoes off, mate. Hello. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.