The Al Shami Kitchen Project – Solidarity Amongst Syrian Refugee Women in Izmit, Turkey

The Southern Responses to Displacement Research Project (2019)

The Al Shami Kitchen Project is a refugee-led initiative that directly challenges assumptions that refugees are passive victims in need of care from outsiders. In this piece, Fatmanur Delioglu’s research, based in Izmit, Turkey, focuses on the solidarity networks developed amongst Syrian refugee women, and between them and members of the local Turkish community. In line with the aims of the Southern Responses to Displacement project, Fatmanur’s research centralizes the voices of refugees and provides insights into how these networks impact on the economic and psycho-social lives of refugee women, the lives of their families, and the wider community. It also examines the structural power imbalances between refugee women and Turkish municipalities, within which these networks operate, and how they resist patriarchal and social norms that can create and maintain multiple disadvantages experienced by refugee women.