An expressive picture of the types of bread, in the upper part of the picture, Arabic bread known as the Syrian bread in Turkey.
In the Turkish city of Istanbul, Syrians are divided between opponents of Syrian bread and supporters of Turkish bread known as ekmek, after their bread weight decreased to half a kilogram and its price doubled to 3 TRY, about half USD.
Calls for a boycott of Syrian bread and its replacement by ekmek have spread to dozens of Syrian groups in most Turkish states on Facebook.
Some refugees attributed the doubling of prices to the greed of owners of ovens originally owned by Syrians, while others suggested a strike by Syrian ovens workers.
Yesterday, a Syrian store owner told me that his daily sales of bread had not changed, and attributed the doubling of prices to higher production costs, especially workers, as a result of the Turkish authorities’ audit of refugee documents, the most important of which is social security.
“I do not offer justifications, but this is a fact,” the shop owner said. “The Syrian worker now costs the owners of bread ovens 1,000 Turkish liras per month, of course, without his monthly wage.”
“There are no Turkish official decisions that obligate those who have ovens to raise prices. The owners of the ovens agreed among themselves to raise the price uniformly, they are like mafia gangs.” He added
The price of one kilogram of Syrian bread has become 6 Turkish liras in a country whose domestic bread price is about 5 liras per kilogram.
Of the approximately 7 million Syrian refugees around the world, more than four million Syrians live in Turkey among most of the Turkish states, after they were displaced by the war.