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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Syrian refugee has achieved full marks in all subjects for Turkey's national high school entrance exam - but the long-term prospects of young Syrians in the country remains rocky, as Turkey plans for the relocation of millions of its refugees.
Mohammed Khalil and his family live on the Syria-Turkey border, having fled the Syrian civil war four years ago. The war has claimed the lives of 570,000 people in the last eight years, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The situation for Syrian refugee children in Turkey has long been precarious. An estimated 400,000 Syrian children in Turkey remain out of school, according to a December 2018 UNICEF Turkey report. Dropout rates at secondary school are high, and language barriers, socio-economic challenges and a lack of awareness of what provisions are available to them are obstacles to educational access.
But Mohammed achieved full marks across the board, beating out the just under 1.1 million ninth grade students who undertook the High School Entrance Exam (LGS) on June 1 for first place.
The stellar Syrian student spent the last academic year in a middle school in Kilis in south-central Turkey, close to the border with Syria.
Halil Avcu, one of Mohammed’s teachers, was overjoyed by Mohammed’s results.
Modest about his contribution to his student’s success, Avcu said it was “all down to Khalil’s efforts. We were only his guides.”
Students taking the LGS hope to attain high enough grades to pursue their favorite field in high school.
Mohammed has big dreams. Interested in science, he will be attending a specialist science high school.
The long-term future of Mohammed and other young Syrian refugees in Turkey, though, seems uncertain.
Driving out the Kurdish-majority Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from Syria’s Manbij and areas east of the Euphrates, Turkey has initiated a mass-scale relocation of Syrian refugees, according to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“330,000 Syrians have returned so far. After the resolution of Manbij and East of Euphrates issues, this figure will reach millions,” he told a Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) parliamentary meeting on Tuesday. There are currently 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, according to the Turkish Directorate General of Migration Management.
Despite all the adversities faced by young Syrian refugees, Mohammed was able to prevail, persevering at school and quickly picking up Turkish.
“I was pretty weak when I first started. I was really bad ... I was learning the [Turkish] alphabet, now I have come first in the exam,” he told Anadolu Agency on Monday after receiving his results.
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