Glimpse of Syria’s heartbreaking decade-old conflict

With a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government lighted the fuse to which has now become a decade-old conflict, leaving hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions displaced.

Some 6.7 million Syrians became refugees due to the conflict, out of which over 3.6 million have found a haven in Turkey, according to data provided by the UN Refugee Agency (UNCHR).

Meryem is one of them, a girl who was born in 2011, just around the days when the civil war broke out.

With the best years of her childhood taken away from her because of the war, Meryem is now in Turkey, studying in fifth grade while trying to live life as normally as possible.

Meryem is one of the beneficiaries of Al-Farah Children and Family Support Center in Ankara. The center operates under the partnership of the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM).

Meryem was born in Damascus, where her parents were trying to keep their children safe.

"Back then, we were dealing with very difficult times. Both our children and we were very afraid of the bombs. We do not remember how we raised our children," Meryem's mother, Afraa Baker, told Hürriyet Daily News.

'Good people of the good country'

Meryem's family decided to move to Lebanon later, but they continued to face difficulties there as well. Finally, they came to Turkey in 2015.

Baker said that even though they could not speak Turkish at that time, they were able to communicate through the language of "empathy."

"God helped us meet good people of the good country," she said.

Baker said that Meryem learned Turkish after she...

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