2014
GOC EDENLER SOSYAL YARDIMLAŞMA VE
KÜLTÜR DERNEĞİIMMIGRANTS’ ASSOCIATION FOR SOCIAL
COOPERATION AND CULTURE
What is Forced Migration ?
According to William Peterson,
• Migration occurring without people’s will and resulting from the
problems experienced in a region or from the environmental
conditions making it hard to live in a region
According to modified UN definition of IDPs,
• “the internally displaced are the persons or groups of persons who
have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places
of habitual residence, in particular, as a result of, or in order to
avoid the effects of, armed conflict, situations of generalized
violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made
disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized
state border”
Batman-Dervisan Village
In Turkey
• At the harsh time of conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan
Worker’s Party (PKK) the Turkish army forces evacuated villages and hamlets
with the aim of undermining the popular support and logistic assistance
attained by PKK from Kurdish people
İzmit
They had to migrate without any preparation . In one night or for some
of them, just in a couple of hours they have to leave their home and
villages.
Batman
• Some of provincials and sub-provincials in which intense evacuation
existed: Lice, Kulp, Cizre, and the center of Sirnak- in Southeast
Anatolian
• The number of evacuated villages: 3438
• The approximate number of forced migrants (Internally Displaced
Persons): 3.5-4 million
İzmir-Torbali
Bursa-Karacabey
Following the evacuation:
• Being subjected to live in outskirts of big cities of the region and
western metropolises in miserable conditions
Adana-Karataş-Tuzla
• At the beginning:
Deprived of right to live, right to resettlement freely, benefiting from
educational and health care facilities and also oppurtunities of
employment in places they have migrated to.
Van
• The children of forcibly displaced families are mostly deprived of
children’s basic rights and most of them are deprived of
educational opportunities because of lack of identity card,
language and poverty problems etc.
İzmir-Torbalı
İstanbul Fatih
In the resettled cities most of the children have to work in miserable
conditions and in the informal sectors in order to survive and contribute to
household economy.
Bursa
Pictures from their living areas after displacement
The scenes of poverty and deprivation
Immigrants’ Association for Social
Cooperation and Culture (GOC-DER)
• Objectives :
• Founded in April 27th, 1997 after a
period of intensified practices of massdisplacements
• A member of Migration Platform which
is composed of Amed Goc-Der, Van GocDer, Akdeniz Goc-Der since 2008 and
this year Göç-Der Cizre has been
established and nowadays we are trying
to have Goc-der in İzmir one more.
- to provide cooperation among migrants and voice out their demands
for a more humane life
- operating as a social network enabling migrants to come together and
organizing public network in order to publicise the tragedy experienced
by millions of people unknown to the public
Since 1998 each year the association has arranged the activities of
Migration Week in order to put the tragedy of mass-displacement on
agenda and make the migration question be debated in search of
finding solutions.
Conducted projects:
• «Literacy Course and Health Seminars For Women»
Reading and Writing course for twenty Forced Migrant Women for 5
months
«New Horizons For the Forced Migrant Youth »
Computer Course was held in order to teach them
basic computer skills for finding job
«Playroom For Children»
In Ayazma, a playroom was established for forced migrant children, in
which children learn how to share the common space and time
The children shared similar problems try to combat with their
traumatic history
«Ayazma Health Project»
Two physical terapists and a nurse provided health check to the IDPs
without health insurance in Ayazma, Istanbul for 4 years twice a week.
Free medicine and check up was provided through this project.
Several Reports on the Social, Economic, and Cultural
Conditions of Forced Migrants in Turkey
Some of them:
- A report on forced mass-displacement covering
Diyarbakır,Van Batman, Istanbul,Izmir and Mersin
between 1999-2001 has been prepared. Basing upon
interviews with 2139 families, the report includes the
causes and impacts of mass displacement on the
people. The sample is composed of 17.845 people.
- A report on economic, social and cultural rights of
Kurdish forced migrants has been published in 2011,
which includes interviews with 1541 people in 9
provinces
To
cover problems
experiinced by the victims
of mass-dislplacement and
bring those problems to
the attention of related
authorities intellectuals
Monthly bulletins on the processand
of internal
other displacement
migration and the
situation of the forced migrants were
published
during the
victims
a periodical
named
intense period of migration.
“Göç-Der Haber Bülteni”
has started its publishing
life in June 1998 and left
behind its 22nd issue

Although it was sued
many times during its
publishing life it was
acquitted of them
Our current published reports :
• Göz Ardı Edilenler İstanbul’da Yaşayan Suriyeli
Sığınmacılar – March 2013
•
Türkiye’de Koruculuk Sistemi: Zorunlu Göç ve Köye Geri
Dönüşler (The Village Guard System in Turkey: Forced
Migration and Returning Back) – June 2013
• Yok Sayılanlar Kamp Dışında Yaşayan Suriye’den Gelen
Sığınmacılar – September 2013
Projects in Progress and Marmara Göç İzleme Platformu (Platform of
Marmara for Monitoring Migration)
• «Migration Stories of Non-Muslims in the 1990s» , an oral history book
project including collecting migration stories of Armenians, Asyrians,
Ezidis, and Chaldeans
• «The determination and mapping of the evacuated, burned and
destroyed living areas with the Emergency Rule declared by the state
during the years 1984-2000» , a research project for providing the data on
the evacuated villages in twenty three cities
• «Hard to Stay or Even Harder to Return», measuring the tendency of
IDPs towards returning back to villages
• Marmara Göç İzleme Platformu (Platform of Marmara for Monitoring
Migration) : a platform for monitoring the problems and needs of IDPs
during the peace process in Turkey and providing solutions and aid to
the IDPs who want to return back to their villages or stay in the host
cities
- legal assessment of current laws and provisions with regards to needs of
those returnees
- Kadim Toraklara Dönüş Projesi (Return to Ancient Villages Project ):
designed representative villages in Dicle (Xaçek ve Heridan)
Immigrants’ Association For Social Cooperation and Culture
(GOC-DER)
2014
Halıcılar Cad. Uğursaray Apt. No:92/15
Fatih/Istanbul
Tel: 0090 212 635 61 22
Fax: 0090 212 532 77 71
E-mail: gocderistanbul@gmail.com