UPDATE 2 - Syrian students in Turkey obtain mid-term report cards

UPDATES WITH MORE STUDENTS OBTAINING REPORT CARDS FROM JARABULUS AND AL-BAB
By Halil Fidan
SANLIURFA, Turkey (AA) - Thousands of Syrian schoolchildren -- who fled war in their country and took refuge in Turkey -- have obtained their mid-term report cards on Friday during the winter break of the 2017-2018 school year.
Around 73,000 Syrian students received their report cards in southeastern Sanliurfa province, a city hosting most Syrian refugees in the country.
Sirrin Temporary Education Center in the city handed out various gifts to successful students.
Nesrin Mohammed, one of the teachers at the center, told Anadolu Agency that they have been giving education to suffering children in order to help them have a bright future.
Mohammed, whose daughter Aye has also been studying at the same education center with her, has been living in Sanliurfa for six years after fleeing conflict in Aleppo.
Despite all the bad memories at her home country, she feels happy as her daughter is doing well in studies, Mohammed said.
12-year-old Syrian Muhammet Halit, whose photo went viral last week while he was staring through the window of a gym in southeastern Adiyaman province, is among the hundreds of Syrians, who obtained their report cards.
Halit -- to whom the gym offered a free lifetime membership after his photo went viral -- expressed his happiness over obtaining a report card for the first time in the country. “I have nothing lacking at school. My friends and teachers love me so much," he told Anadolu Agency.
“My goal is to be a doctor. I hope I will achieve my goal,” Halit said adding: “I also continue doing sports in order to lose weight."

- Karaman Temporary Education Center
Teachers in northwestern Sakarya province have also distributed the report cards to 280 Syrian students studying at Karaman Temporary Education Center.
26 Syrian and 8 Turkish teachers serve at the center, where primary, secondary and pre-school students study.
The temporary education centers in Turkey enable Syrian refugee children to continue their education.
“Turkish students are teaching the Turkish language to these students, while the Syrian teachers are teaching their own languages,” center's director Ali Ciydem said. “We help them transfer into Turkish schools by teaching them the Turkish language here,” he added.
The curriculum is prepared by Arabic and Turkish teachers together because Turkey believes Syrian refugees would go back to their homeland after the war is over.
Some 75,000 students from the northern Syrian districts of Jarabulus and Al-Bab -- from where Operation Euphrates Shield operation by Turkish military cleared Daesh militants -- also got their report cards on Friday.
Syrian students in both districts received their cards from Cengiz Mete, provincial director of the National Education in Gaziantep.
Last November, Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced there were 976,000 Syrian children of school-going age living in Turkey and 620,000 of them have been able to continue their education.
Turkey hosts more than 3.2 million Syrians, more than any other country in the world.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since 2011 when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict, according to UN figures.


*Omer Faruk Cebeci and Ibrahim Yozoglu from Sakarya and Kemal Karagoz from Adiyaman, Kerem Kocalar from Gaziantep have contributed to the story.