Hidden child labour: how Syrian refugees in Turkey are supplying Europe with fast fashion

Bathed in fluorescent lights, the basement room in an Istanbul suburb is completely white. Between mountains of white fabric, Shukri carries clothing to and from the sewing stations and packs white jumpers in boxes. He is clenching a pair of scissors between his teeth looking every bit the seasoned worker, although he is only 12 years old.

On this weekday morning most Turkish children are in school, but this Syrian boy is busy supplying the 15 sewing machines producing clothing mainly destined for the European market. Shukri, a Syrian Kurd who fled with his uncle from Qamishli in northern Syria 10 months ago, often works 60 hours a week earning 600 Turkish lira (£138) to help support his family. “I can’t go to school here because of work,” he says, “but I will go back to school when we return to Syria.”

The factory’s supervisor agrees that 12 years old is very young to be working so many hours, but shrugs off responsibility. “It’s not our fault that they need to work,” he says, “the state failed to provide for them.”

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There are no figures on the informal Syrian labour force in Turkey but there are almost 2.3 million registered Syrian refugees living in the country, according to the UN, with about 9% of them in refugee camps. The rest have to provide for themselves with no financial support from the state. An expert from the Centre for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies has suggested around 250,000 Syrian refugees are working illegally in the country, with a recent Human Rights Watch report claiming child labour is “rampant”. Many reports of illegal working come from the garment sector, the country’s second largest industry.

Turkey’s giant textile industry is a major supplier to Europe but remains largely unregulated, an estimated 60% of the total workforce is unregistered, meaning they work informally, usually without a contract or any employment benefits. Syrian refugees make up a particularly vulnerable section of the workforce. Visiting Syrian workers in textile workshops in three Turkish cities – Istanbul, Mersin and Adana – I encountered child labour, poor working conditions and low pay.

Turkey’s policy until this month had been to treat Syrians as temporary guests, with no right to work, meaning refugees could only work illegally. The landscape is shifting, however. As part of a deal with the EU, the Turkish government last week announced new regulations that will allow any Syrian who has been in the country for six months to apply for a work permit.

The move has been tentatively welcome by NGOs. Danielle McMullan, senior researcher at the UK-based non-profit Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, said permits “will go some way to provide legal protections for working Syrian refugees”. But she warned: “Businesses shouldn’t become complacent, they will need to know where Syrian refugees are in their supply chain and be diligent to the exploitation that has and will continue to take place.”

Discrimination

A key aim of the new work permits is to ensure Syrian refugees in Turkey receive the minimum wage, currently set at 1,647 lira a month (£379). Their illegal status and lack of any bargaining power mean that, for many, wages are far below this level.

In another Istanbul basement workshop, 28-year-old Abdo who fled the war-torn city Deir ez-Zor after clashes between Islamic State and the Syrian regime, speaks about this discrimination. “We get treated differently here,” he says, “we get paid less and have to work harder than our Turkish colleagues.”

“Because you cannot work legally, there is no job security ... Our pay is always late; right now our pay is six days overdue and I have bills to pay.”

In the south of Turkey, wages for refugees are often even lower. In the coastal city of Mersin, I meet 20-year-old Leila in an “under the stairs” garment workshop. She fled here with her parents from Aleppo three years ago. “My parents are too old to work, so I have to provide for us,” she says, “but my earnings are not enough for us to survive.”

Leila earns 1.6 Turkish lira (37p) per hour. “I make 350 lira per month, but we pay 450 lira in rent,” she says. “My brother sends money from Sweden in order for us to survive.” Leila would love to go back to school: “I dream of becoming a teacher.”

Risk for European brands

The informality of the Turkish textile industry means little is known about how much illegal refugee labour is in the supply chain of European brands. The sector is dominated by medium-sized factories and smaller workshops, often with poor working conditions and no auditing, to which larger factories outsource production.

Many European brands import from Turkey as it is close and known for the quality of the work. Turkey is the third largest supplier of clothing to Europe, after China and Bangladesh. In 2014, Europe imported €13.7bn (£10.4bn) worth of textiles and clothing from Turkey.

In Istanbul, the white jumpers that Shukri is packing in boxes will be sent to Italy. Shukri shows me the brand stitched in the neck: Piazza Italia. “The business that owns this workshop both sells to the Turkish market and exports to Germany and Italy,” the supervisor says. Italian clothing company Piazza Italia did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.

In another Istanbul workshop where Syrian refugees are working for 950 lira (£223) per month for a minimum of 60 hours a week, the clothes are made for German brands Orsay and Margittes.

While Margittes did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on the working conditions found at its sub-contractor, Marie-Claude Koenig, business development and CSR officer at Orsay told the Guardian the company very much recognises its “responsibility to improve value-chain management and overall working conditions”. She said Orsay had previously found “critical issues” at a factory in its supply chain which led to a suspension of production.

Recognising the high degree of sub-contracting in the Turkish supply chain, Koenig said the way to increase the rights of workers was through alliances such as the Ethical Trade Initiative of which Orsay is a member. “The challenges in the Turkish textile industry can’t be addressed by an individual company,” she said.

Fair Wear Foundation, an NGO with 90 members representing more than 120 garment brands, has focused on the Turkish garment industry. It advises its members to identify all production locations and ensure they are included in their supply-chain monitoring system. “Under no circumstances should the vulnerability of refugees be used to deny them their basic rights, such as no child labour, no discrimination and the payment of a living wage,” said Ruth Vermeulen, senior international verification coordinator at the Fair Wear Foundation.

Where refugee labour is found, Vermeulen advises brands not to terminate links with suppliers, instead “they should work together with the supplier towards formalising the workers’ status, however possible”. This can be assisting them to apply for identification, residency permits, or applying for a work permit through the employer. However, she admits that these steps are not easy in the current climate.

Other organisations are pushing brands to be transparent about the refugees in their supply chains. The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has asked 28 major clothing brands to account for their supply chains and outline the steps they are taking to protect Syrian refugees from abuse and exploitation. It will publish responses in February.

With the eyes of the EU fixed on Turkey’s capability to contain refugees, a European push for human rights and labour conditions in the country may be further away than it has been for some time. As European imports of garments from Turkey continue to increase, clothing companies could be the drivers of change. “Allowing Syrians to work legally should give brands the opportunity to be more open and collaborative on this serious issue,” said McMullan.