Suffer the little children

Date: 27/09/03

Alleviating the plight of Istanbul's street children

GOKHAN YURDUNMALI was barely six when he was put in a state-run home for juveniles in Istanbul. His story is typical. His drunk father could not afford to send him to school. But Gokhan's supposed protectors became his tormentors, beating him as often as his father had. So, aged ten, he joined Istanbul's legion of street children. Home became dank, derelict buildings. His job was shining shoes - or begging. For entertainment he would sniff glue. “I was on the road to self-destruction,” recalls Gokhan, now a wiry 20-year-old. “But then I met my saviour, Yusuf Kulca.”

Once a street urchin himself, who also escaped from a state-run home, Mr Kulca clawed his way to university to get a teacher's degree and in 1992 founded the city's first privately run home, where children are fed and clothed and also taught skills to get them off the streets.

Mr Kulca reckons that the number of what he calls umut (hope) children in Istanbul has fallen by more than half, to 2,000 in the past decade, even as the city's population has swollen by another 1.5m to reach 10m. Mr Kulca's success won him support from the World Bank and a post in the ministry for women and children's affairs.

Mr Kulca wants to build a huge sports and education centre on the outskirts of Istanbul as part of his ambitious plans to rehabilitate the urchins. But, as his website (umutcocuklari.org.tr) explains, his outfit is short of cash, partly because it is hard to stir up sympathy among ordinary Turks. One big reason is that many of them blame the street children for the city's crime wave. Earlier this year a group of youngsters stabbed a colonel to death in the city's main square after he refused to give them money; all but one of them, explains Mr Kulca, were members of a gang ran by the local mafia.

Another reason for people's hostility to the street children (many of them Kurds whose families fled the war in the south-east) is that many are hooked on drugs. “People come and tell me that we should lock them all up on a island somewhere,” says Guldal Aksit, the minister for whom Mr Kulca works. But as long as he is around, there will be hope at least for some of them.

Brief article looking at the plight of Istanbul's street children. Usuf Kulca is trying to help the children and founded the city's first privately run children's home in 1992. He now wants to build a huge sports and education centre for the children but is finding it hard to stir up sympathy among ordinary Turks and raise cash.

• Primary Source

http://www.umutcocuklari.org.tr http://www.umutcocuklari.org.tr

---