I am wherever there is injustice.
How many ever obstacles you face in life you just need to just keep pushing forward. It’s the only way to go. — Subhi Moazzen
His Story:
I believe I have to be wherever there is injustice and violations against human rights, and this what drove me to Turkey. I had never thought that I would leave Syria someday. July 2014, was the month that ISIS took over Deir-ezzor and that’s when I realised my days in my beloved country was numbered. Before the revolution all my ambitions were to complete my education and get a PhD but with the movement of the revolution everything changed. I believed in the civil movement that rose to get the rights that the people have missed for four decades. I was also doing a masters degree but I had to stop because I couldn’t travel from a place to another.
I somehow in 2012 I left Deir-ezzor to Raqqa and then to Qamishli where the regimes controlled. The war was less intense there than other cities and I had relatives. Later I thought I can go to freed areas in my hometown and since the beginning of the revolution I have been working in human rights. I have this belief that I strongly live to it, which is everyone should do what they were meant to do in life. We tried to lead an association we founded, and moved it from region to region, we were refused by many free army groups due the secular mindset that I had. There was no place where we can do what we wanted to .
I have been in Turkey since 2015. Here I established an organization concerned about violations of human rights. Since that day I work as a manager for the organization. I work about 12–15 hours a week trying to do what I want to accomplish. I have been trying to get my organization to become a legal organization. The bureaucracy in turkey is very difficult. I do not want to do anything off the books. I want all the activities and accomplishments to be legit.
On one side you deal with the Syrian consulate on the other side you deal with Turkish authorities. Sometimes I waste days going from the Syrian consulate and migration office from room to another. The reason of the difficulties I came to realize was that many employees didn’t know what they were doing. Some helped and some didn’t. For example, personally when I was getting my residence permit I had to spend 6 months from my time going from a place to another. Many times I was kicked out of the migration office from secretaries or security just for submitting my case. In addition to that, there are always a discomfort created by Turkish authorities to Syrian activists working for Syrians. That discomfort is basically creating obstacles on our way. Every couple of moths they have more requirements.
It is like if there is a corrupted Syrian organization then all of the organizations are bad and if a Syrian belonged to ISIS then all Syrians are ISIS. Syrians have reached a conclusion that we don’t have a future in this country. Because the future isn’t clear at all. When you lack a sense of prediction about the future you lack the hope of having a future. We also don’t see that in the near future we will go back to Syria for another 10 years. Personally I am wanted for ISIS. There is no future for me neither in here or Syria, but still I believe I have to be wherever there is injustice and violations against human rights. Also the environment should enable me to stay and this is why I don’t see myself here after two years despite the promises.
I wish that Turks would help us as they were a great help in the beginning of the situation in Syria. I wish it was easier to communicate, but a courses costs at least 2000 Tl, and a Syrian would rather spend it on his family. That’s why many of us avoid interacting because it is hard. We even avoid going to their hospitals because of the language and rather go to an illegal Syrian doctor that could do his examination in a shop. Turkish people who welcomed us the most at the beginning should help us more to stay and understand that we are suppressed people who won’t take over their country and stay and sabotage it. A Turkish accountant once told me “you came to here to destroy the country. You Syrian organizations came to here to make Turkey like Syria”. That is so wrong because we are helping our people. The existence of a 100 ISIS Syrians on the Turkish border doesn’t mean that the three million here are ISIS. We ran away from danger and injustice that we are still fighting to go back home and we will.
My People who are in Syria especially the areas that I have lived in are suffering too. There is no internet, electricity, water nor medicine and vaccine but I am a person who has been here for three years and basically want to go back because I miss my parents who I can’t see or hear their voice because they are threatened by ISIS because of me. Of course, they don’t hurt them. My father is 80 yrs. and mother is 65 yrs. I really would appreciate if people would help us through this. I won’t stay in Turkey and I will go back some day. I will go back to see my mother.
Turkish people have adapted defending Syrians and I hope they keep doing that. The Syrian destiny is in the hands of others. Defending Syrians, collecting and documenting their stories and suffer would help us a lot to regain our rights and lives, maybe after months or years, we don’t know. Assisting suppressed people isn’t only about establishing camps but it should also support those people to sustain and live proper life. This is not a difficult thing for Turkish authorities.
