Introduction: The Situation of IDPs in South-East Turkey
IDPs who live in the cities suffer from unemployment, lack of housing, little access to education and health services, and issues of social adaptation. Those who lived in the villages are not accustomed to urban living and they find it hard to adapt without any social or economic assistance. They are used to farming the land and surviving from livestock. Since the 1990s, the major cities in the south east have been inundated with villagers from the regions, with a consequential effect on the city’s original inhabitants.
Van currently has 380,000 citizens of Turkish nationality, of which 200,000 are IDPs. In Bostaniçi district, official figures show that 14,000 people – 90 per cent of the inhabitants - are IDPs. In fact it is believed that the figure is actually closer to 18,000. The mission interviewed a number of families living in Bostaniçi, whose testimony can be found at Annex 3.
Mesut Değer, an MP for Cumchuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party, CHP) and a member of the Human Rights Commission, informed the mission that, prior to forced evacuations, the population of Diyarbakır was 350,000. Today, it is more than 1.5 million. Unemployment figures have risen as a result. For example, in Diyarbakır, the official unemployment figure is 20 per cent; however the actual figure is in fact 60 per cent. The lower official figure reflects the fact that IDPs do not register with the relevant municipal authorities. As a result of the increased unemployment, there is a parallel increase in robberies and prostitution, whilst the number of suicides of young women has increased due to early marriages and feelings of depression caused by unemployment. |