Life in Turkey created a new man inside of me

He was living the events while telling his story, each word showed the effort that he gave to reach his success, how cruel life is, and how important it is to insist and stay hopeful. — Gül Hür

His Story

I left Damascus because the situation was getting worse and worse. Everyday I had to say goodbye to friends who left the country. The quality of education was worsening. I decided to leave Syria and wanted to continue studying in Germany. It was so difficult to leave, but I had no other choice.

I had to go via Turkey and had to wait there for the way to Germany to re-open, it was closed when I came. During the time I was waiting, I started to work for a company in Edirne. Life was cruel there, it was too cold and I had to work 12 hours a day, every day. After 12 days the boss fired me because he didn’t need me anymore. He didn’t pay me any salary. After this I got so shocked about life. It was so harsh and I was so disappointed, I didn’t know what to do. I came back to Istanbul and searched for a new job.

I found a job in a belt factory. I worked very hard, but my salary was very low, about 900 Turkish Lira’s. This was just enough to pay for a bed in a combined apartment. I had a very negative picture of Turkish people because of the people I had met. Many of them cheated me and treated me bad. It was even difficult because I didn’t speak their language yet. Anyway, I had a good experience from that last job and decided to look for other jobs too. I found a new job in another belt industrial company. The manager of this company was a very good man and he treated me so well. He helped me as much as he could, especially after I told him that I wanted to continue studying. He was the one who made my negative impression about Turkish people change into a positive one. He encouraged and helped me to restart studying.

However, it was not an easy. Nobody helped me. I saw the selfishness inside people, especially within the Syrians. Some of them wanted me to pay them money for their ‘services.’ Almost none of them helped me. But I’m glad that later on I met good friends, some of them were Syrians and they helped me with the application for universities. We worked hard together for exams and important papers and files. We made it in the end. I got accepted for Karabük University in the department Business Administration, I loved it. I was so happy I that could finally reach my most important goal after all the hard work.

I had to learn Turkish and because my manager decided to pay me fulltime for parttime work hours. He was so generous. I can see the results now. I am close to finishing my language course and I am preparing to go to Karabük now. I am so excited for starting my university life again. Hopefully I can study Politics besides Business Administration in the future and work in stock markets later.

Life in Turkey created a new man inside of me. Because of everything that I experienced here changed me. I am an independent person now. I believe that nothing is impossible, we need to believe ourselves and go for our dreams. I think Syrians must learn Turkish as soon as possible, so that they can connect with Turkish people. We are brothers and we should understand each other. I know that there are Syrians who suffered more than me, we all have our own stories and we all have dreams, so we must work hard. We may fall and fail times, but in the end, we will succeed. We need to believe in our dreams and struggle to achieve them.