Turkey's problems with integrating Syrians into its labor force deepen

There is a rise in the number of reports claiming that disagreements between Syrians and Turkish people have recently escalated amid several incidents across the country. Top officials are calling for an ease of such incidents, urging all to live in peace together. This is promising, of course, but such conflicts cannot be avoided without solid attempts to resolve the country's problems with integrating Syrians into the labor force. Various data have, however, showed that these problems are deepening. 

Turkey is hosting nearly 3 million Syrians, with the Syrian population outnumbering in some areas such as the southeastern province of Kilis. These people must work to maintain a living in their host country. In 2016, Turkey allowed Syrians to apply for work permits. Until now, fewer than 20,000 work permits, nearly 1 percent of the refugees at a working age, were issued. The remaining thousands of Syrians have entered the country's shadow economy. 

Two recent researches have showed how the entrance of Syrians has affected the dynamics of the local labor force. One of them is a working paper, issued by Central Bank experts, titled "The Impact of Syrian Refugees on Natives' Labor Market Outcomes in Turkey: Evidence from a Quasi-Experimental Design."

According to the study, the informal employment-to-population ratio has declined by around 2.2 percentage points as a consequence of refugee inflows. Of this decline in informal employment, around 50 percent went out of the labor force, 32 percent remained unemployed, and 18 percent switched to a formal job. For men, the decline in the informal employment-to-population ratio is 1.9 percentage points. Most of the men who lost their informal jobs remained unemployed. For women, however, the decline...