Ahmad Karkar is one of the beneficiaries of the “Şirketim Project.” He participated in the project in February 2020, and since then, he completed all necessary formalization processes within the framework of the project.
Ahmad was born in Aleppo in 1989 and received a high school degree there. In Syria, he used to work in the textile sector, concentrated explicitly on sportswear, and until his breakaway, he continued to adhere to his job. Today, he runs a grocery shop in Sultangazi, Istanbul, where he also lives.
However, as millions of Syrians, he obliged the leave Syria in 2016. He made entrance to Turkey through the countryside of Aleppo by oneself. The rest of the family followed his path a year after. Later, the family reunited in Istanbul. Today, he is single and lives with his mother, brother, and father.
In Syria, he used to an owner of a sportswear store. In Turkey, he did not think to work in any field except for his own shop. Reasonably, he immediately decided to establish a grocery shop since he has experience in running a business. In 2016, he established the shop; however, until the project, he did not make any registrations; in other words, the business was informal in all aspects. This situation generated significant risk for his business, and the business might be shut down by the related authorities at any time.
Before the project, he did not know the United Work and GIZ; once, one of the project field officers visited his shop, he learned about United Work, GIZ, and “Şirketim Project.” After listening to the project from the field officer, he could not decide to participate in the first thought. To overcome his indecision, he talked with his friends and brother, and following their advice, he returned a call to the United Work to express his opinion to join the project.
Within the scope of the project, he completed the shop’s tax office registration, chamber registration, work permit, municipality license, and necessary inventories. According to his evaluation, the project has genuinely been successful. It contributed to him in both legal and economic terms. Now, he is happy to run an entirely formal business, to leave behind all problems encountered because of the informality, and to complete all these processes with the help of significant financial support. Additionally, the financial support to subsidy project beneficiaries after the adverse financial effect of the COVID-19 outbreak has been seriously contributive to him. He thinks that in these uncertain days, this kind of support was a necessity and supportive, and it has reached the address at a very accurate time; otherwise, conditions would generate a serious risk, and he would have face the problem to sustain his shop. Therefore, he is really grateful to the project partners, and he would like to express his appreciations to them.
In the future, he envisions to expand his business by establishing new branches all around the city, wants to improve himself, and aims to contribute to himself and society. Besides, he has generally found Turkish people respectful, although it was a bit troublesome in the beginning because of the language barrier. Nevertheless, when he improved his Turkish, he started to communicate more with the Turkish people, and he received substantial support from them. In the near future, he plans to stay in Turkey because he is reluctant to return to Syria during the state of war. However, he states that, if one day, war ends and conditions in Syria improves, he would like to return back.