Paydar H. about his flight from Syria and the decision for Istanbul

Paydar H. is a Kurd from Aleppo in Syria. After the bombing of the city in 2013, he fled with his brother to Turkey via Afrin in Syria at the age of 24 and reached Istanbul on May 15, 2013. After successfully finding an apartment in Istanbul, his parents and sister joined him. He got married in 2015, has two children and works in an international organization as an interpreter. In this interview passage he talks about the flight from Syria and the decision for Istanbul.

I am from Syria, Aleppo city. I was living in Aleppo city but I’m originally from Afrin city. But I didn’t live in Afrin at all. When the war started, I was studying in college, and I couldn’t continue because our place was bombed. So, my family ran away to Afrin first, then I followed them in March 2013, but Afrin wasn’t possible for me, it wasn’t the solution. No college, nothing. So, our situation became hard. […] So, I told my family, we’re getting short of money as well. My father had money, but he hasn’t been working for all over a year. We were spending his savings, so I told them that our savings will be finished in six months or one year. We could work with my brothers, we thought, we could work in Turkey. And with the fact in mind that the war was continuing and coming here within a period of time, this was a good idea. […] So, we saw Turkey to be the best solution to come and work here, find a job to find the money to bypass the time of the war. First of all, you said it will be for six months or one year. When we first came, we weren’t thinking about like staying in here. It’s a social, financial situation that drove us to come to Turkey. […]

It was like Turkey was opening the door for everybody to come. You know at that time the doors were literally open. It was no borders, so you can go and if you don’t like it you can come back after 20 days or one month. So, everybody was going and coming at that time (2013). So, we said let’s try, we had some relatives here that have been working and they had a better life situation then Syria. […] In Turkey, you have everything. There is no war, you know. […]

We were smuggled through the border but it wasn’t smuggled really. The border then was opened, so you can just walk out. We walked, got to the other side, we had relatives in Turkey. My mother had relatives, my father had relatives, we have relatives both Turkish and Kurdish that live in Turkey site. Then we went to them. We stayed in Kırıkhan for one day until we got the pass, the bus tickets, we got the bus ticket and the next day with the bus ticket, we went directly to Istanbul. […]

I didn’t really choose Istanbul actually, we had already people living here. We know them and they were living here and working here in the same area that when we first came. And they said to us, there is work here if you want you can come here and find a house to rent. It’s cheap etc. So according to them we came here. I didn’t know anything about Istanbul. I know, I knew about Istanbul that is a city, it’s a big city, it’s between Europe and Asia and it’s a very historical city etc. but I really didn’t see it with my eyes. It was my first time in Turkey. I didn’t know how to speak Turkish. I was thinking about if I come here and speak English with everybody, I thought everybody speaks English and with my English, I can go everywhere. Like when I first came, it was a big shock (laughing). Then I was speaking Kurdish with people.

First, me and my two brothers we came, we stayed with some relatives for a couple days until we found the house and we rented it and after we rent a house and we prepared some furnitures, we bought some furnitures, I called my father and then my father, my mother and my sister came. All the family came after us. It was 12 days between us and them, so it wasn’t that much. […]

I was thinking [about staying] six months, one year. My brother had other ideas. He was thinking of going to Germany. I thought about getting back and continuing my university and finishing. I had this one year left before finishing university.

Now, I’m not thinking about going back anymore.

This interview was conducted in English by Elif Yenigun for the We Refugees Archive in March 2021 via Zoom.