Refugees forced to sleep on streets in Turkey as coronavirus outbreak sees collapse of aid

At an Istanbul bus terminal, the kindness of strangers replaces aid in the shadow of a pandemic, Borzou Daragahi reports from Istanbul

Refugees take shelter in Istanbul’s main bus terminal (Shadi Turk/The Independent)

The young Afghan couple were huddling in the cold; their toddler coughing and wheezing uncontrollably. Amid fears of coronavirus, and public apathy towards refugees, most of the travellers making their way through Istanbul’s vast main bus terminal quickly averted their eyes and hurried past.

But something drew 45-year-old businessman Isa Kapcak to the family of Fahim Ayoubi. He, his wife Negin, their sick two-and-half-year old Mohammad-Sabet and a group of perhaps two dozen or so Afghan and Syrian refugees were exposed to the elements after they had been kicked out of the terminal. Many were penniless and had suffered through harrowing journeys to the Greek border, where they had sought to cross into the European Union at the behest of Turkish authorities.

Kapcak, who leases buses to transport firms and runs a dry cleaning shop in the Istanbul bus terminal, insisted on taking the boy and his parents to a hospital.

And he paid for cheap hotel rooms for the others.

“I saw them sitting there, and the boy was sick,” he tells The Independent, standing in the hallway of the bus station, where he has turned a room he used for storage into a temporary quarters for refugee families with children. “I called an ambulance, and sent them to the hospital, and bought them some small things, like new socks and clothes.”

Kapcak is among a small group of volunteers and Samaritans helping those in the most dire need as a global pandemic drains public coffers, threatens livelihoods, and idles aid workers. The coronavirus epidemic has confined billions across the world to their homes, shuttering many workplaces – including relief organisations that used to deliver aid to needy refugees, leaving some literally stranded on streets and roadways.

“On the ground, they are not doing anything,” says Shadi Turk, a Syrian-Turkish journalist who volunteers to help the displaced.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is seeking $250m (£202m) to address the threat of coronavirus among those fleeing war or displaced by conflict. The UN has called for humanitarian pauses in war zones around the world to allow aid workers to address the growth of Covid-19 among the displaced.

“A global humanitarian ceasefire would provide the breathing space we need in order to curb the spread of the pandemic in conflict zones,” German foreign minister Heiko Maas said on Friday.

To date there have been no confirmed cases of coronavirus among the migrants and refugees in Turkey as well as the aid workers and government officials seeking to assist them.

“Asylum seekers, refugees and internally displaced people may be especially vulnerable to health risks,” says Selin Unakl, a spokesperson for UNHCR in Turkey. “They need practical and non-discriminatory access to information and to adequate medical care. This is not only a moral and legal imperative; it is also a practical one that helps ensure the safety and wellbeing of the entire community.”

Turkish officials are also worried about Syrian refugees huddled together in tent cities along the country’s southeast border, many living in unsanitary conditions and without the luxury of being able to maintain “social distancing.” Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after a video conference with G20 leaders on Thursday, called Syrian refugees “the most disadvantaged group” in the face of the pandemic and called for more international aid.

“When you look at the devastation it has wreaked in so-called developed countries, the damage that could be done in fragile or conflict contexts could be devastating,” Juliet Parker, director of operations at Action Against Hunger UK, said in a statement. “Solutions like social distancing simply aren’t possible when you are sharing facilities with thousands or even tens of thousands of people.”

David Milliband, leader of International Rescue Committee said: “Handwashing, social isolation and consulting a health centre are nearly impossible in overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh or in tents in northwest Syria.”

It’s going badly because they are starving. Especially with this virus, it is very dangerous, your body should be strong to fight the virus. And they are weak

Turk, an energetic 29-year-old, isn’t waiting around for leaders to make decisions or allocate funding. He spends his days snapping photos of refugees’ identification cards, sending them via WhatsApp to a relief organisation commissioned by UNHCR. They send back bus tickets for those refugees who wish to return to other Turkish cities.

In recent months, Turkey has begun to crack down on refugees living in cities where they are not registered, worrying that dense clusters of foreigners will anger locals and raise neighbourhood tensions.

Turk worries about an outbreak of Covid-19 among the refugees, and scrambles to obtain meals and soap for them by lobbying local businesses and wealthy Syrians.

“It’s going badly because they are starving,” he says. “Especially with this virus, it is very dangerous, your body should be strong to fight the virus. And they are weak.”

Almost all the refugees stuck in the Istanbul bus station were among those responding to Erdogan’s announcement in late February that Turkey would no longer block migrants in the country from exiting west towards Europe.

But, although Erdogan opened the gates, Europe gave the refugees the cold shoulder, quickly allocating hundreds of millions of euros to help Greece harden its frontier, and many found themselves stuck.

Ayoubi, 25, his wife Negin and their son, had been living for a year in the central Anatolian town of Kirikkale when Erdogan announced the opening of the border. They sold off their belongings, got rid of their rented flat and headed to the border.

They squandered their meagre savings on buses and taxis to get them first to the frontier, which had been closed shut, and then back to Istanbul, where they were forced out onto the side of a highway in the middle of the night by an unscrupulous driver.

They walked miles to the main bus terminal, for lack of anywhere else to go, but were ordered to leave the waiting halls of the enormous complex deep within Istanbul’s European side, and linger outside. That’s when Kapcak spotted them and reached out to help.

Ayoubi’s small family shares the 25-square-metre room with the family of 33-year-old Omar Moussa, his wife and their four children. The Syrians had fled Aleppo more than five years ago and were living in the southern city of Gaziantep when they decided to try to cross the border. Though he had a job working in the local market, Turkey’s economic downturn has made it nearly impossible to make ends meet.

Turk, the volunteer, says he has managed to convince some businesspeople with unused spaces in and around the bus station to allow refugees to shelter at least while they figure out where they are going next, or secure more permanent housing. An Istanbul municipality provides some breakfast, while a local restaurant donates some lunches.

Mohammed Awas, an Aleppo native, had been living in the city of Mersin for five years, living in a rented flat and repairing motorcycles for a living. But when he, his wife and five children were offered a free bus ride to the Greek border on 27 February, they sold off everything and gambled on the possibility of migrating to the west.

They managed to cross the frontier and made it about five miles into the European Union before they were caught by Greek security forces and stuffed into trucks. Border police forced them onto boats and took them back across the river to Turkey, and ordered them to get off.

After days of lingering near the Turkish border city of Edirne, sleeping outside petrol stations, they managed to scrounge together some money to pay for a trip back to Istanbul. Now they shelter in an unused cafe beneath an overpass leading to the bus terminal. “I’m trying to arrange housing here,” he says, ruling out returning to southeast Turkey. “I have nothing in Mersin. I have nothing here either.”