The Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, İHH, revealed recently that 600,000 Syrian orphans currently reside inside Turkey, prompting a group of Turkish writers and journalists to push Ankara to move to foster the children.
Writer Fuat Ugur wrote in the newspaper 'Turkey' that the Ministry of Family and Social Policies must take quick action to launch a specialized campaign to foster Syrian orphans, stressing that Turkey has succeeded over the years in providing a good model for family nurseries. As child adoption procedures can take a long time, fostering children is often considered a more practical solution.
Ugur explained that the most important characteristic of foster care is that the child remains under the supervision of the state, and thus officials would visit the adoptive family to review the child’s environment; if any problems arise, officials can immediately intervene. If the child has any living family members, relatives also have the full right to visit the child on a regular basis.
The Turkish writer noted that the most dangerous threat to children is falling into the hands of ‘child mafias’, warning: "we noticed the emergence of websites that claim the adoption of Syrian children. Children might be bought through such websites, and then it is hard to find out what might happen to them."
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
