The Dream West

Children were playing near a collapsed building in North Kilis (Turkey) on November 22, 2020. They were all brothers and played near the crane that their father used to dig through the rubble. The outskirts of the city are a jumble of ruins, half-built buildings, and poorly paved roads. In these neighborhoods live the poorest families of war refugees who managed to cross the border. Kilis is the first stop once you get to cross the border with Turkey.

Children were playing in the rubble of buildings trying to scale the ruins on December 8, 2020. On the southwestern outskirts of Gaziantep (Turkey) are most of the Syrian population displaced to the city. There they live in old buildings, most of them without basic amenities. Many of these children cannot access education because they do not know the Turkish language, so they play in the street or help their parents at work.

A family moves to Harap Mescit Sk. in Gaziantep (Turkey) on November 9, 2020. This street has old Armenian houses that were burned during the so-called Armenian Genocide in 1915. They are neighborhoods that are avoided by the Turkish population and have been turned into a refuge for many families displaced by war.

Children work in a clothing manufacturing workshop on December 4, 2020, on Haki Abdurrahman Bey Street in Gaziantep (Turkey). Child employment in this area of ​​Turkey is a common reality. With no access to school, many children spend their childhood working to help their family with expenses. They don't get an education but they learn a job and the local language. The days are usually 12 hours of daily work or 6/7 in the afternoons.

A child removes the cardboard and waste paper from the shops of the Gaziantep Bazaar (Turkey) on December 3, 2020. He walks the streets asking for the remains of packaging. When he fills the bag, he takes it to a warehouse where they accumulate all the garbage. At nightfall, they take him in a truck to a sales center.

A child sells packages of tissues to tourists who come to the port to take the boats for the Halfeti (Turkey) tourist route on November 16, 2020. Halfeti is a tourist spot relatively close to the border where many children work. The image contrasts with that of the Turkish families who go to visit to make a tourist route through the ancient ruins that are there.

A girl looks from the roof of her ruined house to the street on November 30, 2020, in Gaziantep (Turkey). In her neighborhood, most houses do not have habitable conditions. Even so, they are all occupied by families of refugees from the war.

Ousman, Hussein, Mehmed, Memduh, and Shabid pose for me while kites fly. We did not sit upon a hill on the outskirts of Gaziantep (Turkey) and started talking. They told me they were Turkish but they couldn't speak turkish. Finally, they told me that her parents were from a village on the outskirts of Syria. Their families lived in a building in the middle of a wasteland at 87244 Sk.
The fear of being mistreated because of your nationality is constant at the border. Many minorities prefer to say that they are Turkish to reveal they are from other countries.