The Roma Education Research and Information Center will be launched by the Bursa-based Association for Research and Improvement of Roma Culture and Solidarity, the first organization to conduct research on the Turkish Roma community.Speaking to the Anatolia news agency, the Bursa-based association’s deputy chairman, Orçun Zolun, argued that studies on the Roma have so far been conducted by non-Roma people and even their best work lacks information. “There can be no one who possibly knows us better than us. We can recount everything without hiding anything. Thus, we decided to establish a research group that will give a complete picture,” he said.
A research group within the center will conduct studies first in Bursa and later throughout Turkey. The work to be carried out by the center will include research on the size of Bursa’s Roma population, how many Roma children receive education, how many Roma do not have identity cards and how many couples are not officially married or are married informally.
“We will discuss possible solutions with local administrators, police departments and universities. A commission, envisaged to be led by the governor’s office, will be formed in Bursa. The governor, the mayor and Uludağ University in Bursa said they would support us,” Zolun said.
Zolun also highlighted that there are only a few information centers about Roma people in the world and the center in Turkey will make an archive of studies conducted on Roma society, including movies, documentaries and theses. Noting that there are approximately 5,000 books written on Roma culture around the world, Zolun said copies of these books will be obtained and translated into Turkish.
Parents scare their children by saying they will be stolen by Roma if they go out, Zolan said as an indication of their alienation from society. They have remained closed within their community so far. “We need to be integrated with the rest of society,” he added.
Things are proceeding carefully so that mistakes aren’t made, Zolun said, and the need for such a center was pointed out during a Roma workshop in December 2009 when State Minister Faruk Çelik asked them specific questions about their community in Turkey, to which they could only reply roughly. “The minister said it would be very good if there were a center that the state and universities could use and where documentaries and movies reflecting Roma culture could be found. That was a nice coincidence. We had already had this issue on our agenda for about a year,” he explained.
