As a graduate student at Sabancı University Conflict Analysis and Resolution M.A. Program, Madeleen conducted an oral history interview with "Zaid", a Syrian student at Sabancı University. In the interview, Madeleen witnesses the destructiveness of war and a story of forced migration from Syria to Turkey.
Madeleen: “During the interview, we both maintained a professional, albeit comfortable environment with each other. However, it being my first interview, I found myself nervous and unable to stick to the questions as I imagined. Yet, Zaid’s confidence in answering seemingly personal and disturbing memories, made my first experience somewhat easier. I became aware after the interview how ironic it was that a war-torn Syrian interviewee could provide comfort to an American interviewer.”
“I realized during the interview there were a lot of pauses, moments of recollection on the interviewee’s side and pauses on my side to collect my thoughts on what I wanted to ask next. Typically, silence disturbs me, makes me uncomfortable, but I welcomed the tactic to allow silence to have a place in an interview. I cannot deny that it was a challenge for me and in one or two instances I realized I interrupted the interviewee to ask or comment on a topic of interest.”
From interview:
“… [N]obody was expecting something like that [Civil War]. We could not expect to see airplanes throwing [bombs] over the city. We would not accept chemical weapons used against us. Nobody imagined that, we thought it was because of what happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, people were expecting someone would help them. But everybody was just watching and the massacres kept happening everyday. So nobody was expecting that would happen, we didn’t have anything to do about it.”
“I, I only got the residence permit here when I signed up at Sabanci, before that, I didn’t have a residence permit. Um, there is no true future, if the government was changed during the last elections, the Syrians would be kicked out. So, its really as simple as that. So its really difficult to see a future here in Turkey, even, even most people don’t plan on staying here. They are just, they want to, to have a stable place to stay until things get better in Syria.”
The interviewee preferred that his name not be used.