Stay or go? The dilemma of Turkey’s Syrian refugees

More than 50,000 Syrian refugees have left Turkey to return home since Bashar al-Assad’s ouster. But for many others living in the country, the thought raises a host of worrying questions. In Altindag, a northeastern suburb of Ankara home to many Syrians, Radigue Muhrabi, who has a newborn and two other children, said she could not quite envisage going back to Syria “where everything is so uncertain”. “My husband used to work with my father at his shoe shop in Aleppo but it was totally destroyed. We don’t know anything about work opportunities nor schools for the kids,” she said. After the civil war began in 2011, Syria’s second city was badly scarred by fighting between the rebels and Russian-backed regime forces.Even so, daily life in Turkey has not been easy for the Syrian refugees who have faced discrimination, political threats of expulsion and even physical attacks. In August 2021, an angry mob smashed up shops and cars thought to belong to Syrians in Altindag as anti-migrant sentiment boiled over at a time of deepening economic insecurity in Turkey. Basil Ahmed, a 37-year-old motorcycle mechanic, recalled the terror his two young children experienced when the mob smashed the windows of their home. Even so, he said he was not thinking of going straight back.- ‘Not the same Syria’ – “We have nothing in Aleppo. Here, despite the difficulties, we have a life,” he said. “My children were born here, they don’t know Syria.”As the Assad regime brutally cracked down on the population, millions fled in fear, explained Murat Erdogan, a university professor who specialises in migration.  “Now he’s gone, many are willing to return but the Syria they left is not the same place,” he told AFP.”Nobody can predict what the new Syrian government will be like, how they will enforce their authority, what Israel will do nor how the clashes (with Kurdish fighters) near the Turkish border will develop,” he said.”The lack of security is a major drawback.”On top of that is the massive infrastructure damage caused by more than 13 years of civil war, with very limited electricity supplies, a ruined public health service and problems with finding housing. At the SGDD-ASAM, a local association offering workshops and advice to migrants, 16-year-old Rahseh Mahruz was preparing to go back to Aleppo with her parents. But she knew she would not find the music lessons there that she has enjoyed in Ankara. – ‘No emotional ties to Syria’ -“All my memories, the things I normally do are here. There’s nothing there, not even electricity or internet. I don’t want to go but my family has decided we will,” she said. Of the 2.9 million Syrians in Turkey, 1.7 million are under 18 and have few emotional links to their homeland, said the association’s director Ibrahim Vurgun Kavlak.”Most of these youngsters don’t have strong emotional, psychological or social ties with Syria. Their idea of Syria is based on what their families have told them,” he explained.  And there may even be problems with the language barrier, said professor Erdogan. “Around 816,000 Syrian children are currently studying in Turkish schools. They have been taught in Turkish for years and some of them don’t even know Arabic,” he said. During a visit to Turkey earlier this week, EU crisis commissioner Hadja Lahbib told AFP she shared “the sense of uncertainty felt by the refugees”. “The situation is unstable, it’s changing and nobody knows which direction it will go in,” she said.”I’ve come with 235 million euros ($245 million) worth of aid for refugees in Syria and in the surrounding countries like Turkey and Jordan, to meet them and see what worries them and how to respond to that,” she said. If there ends up being a huge wave of Syrians heading home, it will likely have an unsettling impact on certain sectors of Turkey’s workforce.Although they are often paid low wages, commonly under the table, their absence would leave a gaping hole, notably in the textile and construction industries. For Erdogan, the economic shock of such a shift could ultimately be beneficial for Turkey, forcing it to move away from the exploitation of cheap labour.”We cannot continue a development model based on exploitation,” he said. 

Un titre sur dix livré sur Deezer est du bruit généré par IA

Un titre sur dix livré sur Deezer est du bruit ou une fausse chanson générés par intelligence artificielle (IA), a indiqué vendredi la plateforme musicale, qui dit avoir mis en place un “outil de pointe” pour les détecter.”Environ 10.000 pistes totalement générées par IA sont livrées à la plateforme chaque jour, soit environ 10% du contenu quotidien livré”, a indiqué Deezer dans un communiqué.Deezer tire cette conclusion au terme d’une année de déploiement de la technologie qu’il a conçue en interne et qui a abouti à “une demande pour deux brevets” fin décembre.Cette technologie permet, d’après l’entreprise, de “détecter spécifiquement le contenu généré par IA sans nécessiter un entraînement extensif sur des ensembles de données spécifiques”.L’enjeu pour Deezer est de mieux rémunérer les artistes en supprimant des contenus parasites. Les personnes qui les mettent en ligne, sans être musiciens, peuvent prétendre à une rémunération, alors que seuls les écoutent des comptes d’utilisateurs créés artificiellement à cette fin.”L’intelligence artificielle continue de perturber de plus en plus l’écosystème musical, avec une quantité croissante de contenu IA”, a souligné le PDG Alexis Lanternier, cité dans le communiqué.Celui-ci veut aller plus loin: “À l’avenir, nous avons l’intention de développer un système de marquage pour le contenu totalement généré par IA, et de l’exclure des recommandations algorithmiques et éditoriales”.Par ailleurs, Deezer explique avoir “pour objectif de continuer à développer les capacités de sa technologie pour inclure la détection de voix générées par deepfakes”, à savoir des imitations indétectables par l’oreille humaine.En collaboration avec la Sacem, qui défend en France les intérêts des musiciens, le français Deezer, l’un des concurrents du numéro un mondial du streaming musical, Spotify, avait annoncé mi-janvier un changement de son modèle de rémunération. Il cherchait à mieux récompenser les artistes écoutés moins fréquemment mais ayant une plus grande variété d’auditeurs.

Fire-hit California frets over Trump’s funding threats

As fire-wrecked Los Angeles braces for a visit by President Donald Trump, many are worrying the mercurial Republican will yank the federal support the city needs to get back on its feet.Trump is due in the shell-shocked city for a few hours on Friday afternoon, where he will be able to see for himself the devastation wrought by the deadly fires — damage whose repair will cost billions of dollars.Former president Joe Biden was quick to pledge whatever was needed to deal with the disaster in the waning days of his administration.But almost as soon as the fires erupted, Trump began sticking the boot in, lashing out at California Governor Gavin Newsom, and resurrecting an earlier hobbyhorse about water supplies.”I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water run down,” Trump said this week, emphasizing his false belief that there is a valve in northern California that can be turned to release billions of gallons (liters) of water in the rain-starved state.- Funding needed – Threats to withhold federal funds are worrisome to some of those who lost everything in the fires.”I just can’t fathom that the government is going to let so many people (suffer)… that they’re not going to help them,” Sebastian Harrison told AFP.This 59-year-old former actor lost his Malibu home in the blaze. He was not insured, unable to afford premiums that topped $40,000 a year.Without government money, getting his life back on track might prove almost impossible, he fears.In Altadena, a modest city further inland, as in the upscale Pacific Palisades, thousands of ruined buildings need to be cleared. Federal cash granted by Biden for 180 days is intended to cover this.But local authorities fret the White House’s new inhabitant might not honor that check.”Everybody’s rushing to make sure the funds get here before Trump gets in office,” a local official told AFP last week, on condition of anonymity.But, the person said, the demography of the disaster — which affected some very wealthy people as well as those of more modest means — gives hope that Trump won’t be able to abandon the region.”Trump may think of Altadena as a bunch of low-life Democrats, but Pacific Palisades is a different story,” the source said.”That’s the first zip code where he and other Republicans go to when they want to raise money in Los Angeles.”- “Principle of unity” – Pacific Palisades and the parts of Malibu it abuts are considerably less left-leaning than other parts of Los Angeles.While the area has its share of Hollywood liberals, it also has property developers, businesspeople and other Republicans.Among those who lost their homes was Mel Gibson, who Trump has just appointed to an ill-defined role as ambassador to Hollywood.The new president’s visit to Los Angeles looks set to include a meeting with the state’s governor — whom Trump delights in calling Gavin “Newscum.”There is no love lost between the two men, but Newsom has taken a more conciliatory approach in recent weeks.”Historically, federal disaster aid has been provided without conditions, recognizing that political calculations or regional divides should not encumber relief efforts,” he wrote in a letter last week to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.”This principle of unity is at the heart of our nation’s resilience.”But if the federal government cannot be cajoled into stumping up the funds needed for recovery and reconstruction, California says it is prepared to use the courts.The state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said he found it “disheartening” that Trump and his allies were seeking to politicize tragedy.”We have every expectation that federal action will be taken to support California and the hardworking Californians whose lives and livelihoods are at risk,” he told AFP.”We have been preparing for the Trump administration for months, and we will not hesitate to act if we believe the president is violating the law.”

Taekwondo star Hamidi sacrifices her freedom to battle the Taliban

Afghan taekwondo star Marzieh Hamidi told AFP the death threats she has received, forcing her to live under French police protection, show how effective her stinging criticism of the Taliban has been.The 22-year-old’s defiance of Afghanistan’s governing Taliban fits well with her coming from “a family of freedom fighters.”Her father fought in the Afghanistan army and then alongside the late mujahideen leader Ahmed Shah Massoud before moving to Iran.Hamidi’s weapon has been her voice, since coming to France in December 2021 after living for a few months under Taliban rule when they seized power again in August that year.However, her no-holds-barred criticisms of the Taliban had serious repercussions.Last September she was granted police protection after receiving 5,000 calls, including 500 threatening to either murder or rape her.French prosecutors opened an investigation in September after her lawyer Ines Davau lodged a legal complaint for cyber-harassment and death threats, as well as threats of rape.Remarkably, the erudite and passionate Hamidi — formerly Afghanistan’s national champion at -57 kilos and with a ranking in the top 100 in the world — sees the positive side.”It means that I have more power than them, because I always talk about the situation,” she told AFP at Davau’s office in Paris.”This time I talk about more details, because it’s not to boycott Taliban, it’s also to boycott who are normalising them.”It can be an athlete, an artist, activist.”She believes in particular that the men’s Afghan cricket federation has close links to the Taliban and should be boycotted by their opponents.Hamidi, whose sporting aim is to compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, has an Afghan passport and a 10-year French residency permit.She said it was her duty to harangue the Taliban and their supporters.The Taliban has imposed an austere version of Islamic law that the United Nations has labelled “gender apartheid” and Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are banned from secondary school and university. The Taliban authorities claim Islamic law “guarantees” the rights of all Afghans.”I have to fight, because I was stuck there three months,” said Hamidi.”I saw that the system is against women, how they are making it a bad place for everyone.”So because of that, I’m talking about this.”Hamidi, who was born in Iran and returned with her family to live in Afghanistan in 2020, remains in touch with friends back home.”Each time is bad when I talk with them.”- ‘Feel so lonely’ -Hamidi says wearing the burqa is repugnant — a 2022 edict by the supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said women should wear the garment but many just wear headscarves and long coats.”I think this is the end of humanity. Like, you cannot breathe.”You put on the burqa. It’s like you put yourself in a prison when you walk in the city.”Hamidi’s way of life in France is restricted in a manner which would be alien to ordinary people.Phone calls have to be made to cinemas and restaurants alerting them to her coming, accompanied by a police bodyguard, and to ensure it is “a safe area.”Her frustration boils over at times.”I mean, at my age, it’s too much for me, you know, like, I just want to live free and to go crazy,” she said.”I’m proud of my fight, I’m not regretful of my fight, but I’m sad what’s going on in my life because of that.”This is costing my safety, my freedom, my joy in life.”She has the unconditional support of her parents, three sisters and brother — who live at an undisclosed location.”It’s the spirit of my parents that they are combatants,” said Hamidi, who managed to see them recently.”They really have this spirit to fight against this Taliban ideology.”Because of that, they always support me. “Sometimes my mum tells me, ‘calm down, Marzieh’. But, it’s my mom. She’s stressing for me.”My father, he’s like, no, no, no, keep going, keep going.” Hamidi, whose sole company largely consists of her PR representative Baptiste Berard Proust and Davau, says things are bleak at times.”At the end of the day, it’s me facing this,” she said.”Sometimes I feel so lonely, even if I have good people around me.”I’m kind of lost, sometimes it’s difficult to keep the balance in life for me.”It’s a lot of pressure, because the most important thing for me is my taekwondo.”She admits she is “really afraid”. nevertheless her indomitable spirit ensures she remains unbowed.  “If I stay silent, they win.”