Bay Area Kurds call for more U.S. aid to Syrian refugee crisis

SAN FRANCISCO (KTVU) - A small Kurdish community in the Bay Area has been lobbying the United States to accept more refugees and to convince U.S. allies in the region to assist the flood of refugees pouring across the Syrian border into Hungary and Turkey.

Some Bay Area Kurds have family members and friends in the middle of the international crisis.

The United Nations Refugee Agency is warning that in the next 10 days, Hungary can expect about 42,000 more refugees and Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of John Kerry is expected to brief members of Congress about how many refugees the U.S. might be willing to take in.

Emin Tenkin is a Kurdish man who owns a restaurant in San Francisco and another in Berkeley, The restaurants are named Kobani after an important Kurdish city in Syria, and Tenkin serves up a different kind of comfort food.

It's Kurdish culture on a plate, food for the soul.

Sizzling slabs of kebabs and couscous salads are crafted with love for his Kurdish homeland and the people who are being uprooted.

"Being a refugee is basically the worst thing you would taste in life," said Tekin, 36, who says he's tasted that bitterness.

Tekin is a chef, and says he was tortured by Turkish police and nearly paralyzed before he came to the U.S. in 2000 as a political refugee.

Now, he cooks, keeping his culture alive in San Francisco's Marina district, a world away from the refugees fleeing Syria.

"People suffer and their life is gone. Their families are gone. There are thousands and thousands of people who lost their families," Tenkin said.

Nihat Hosgur is a San Carlos software engineer.

"Even though we are very distant from what's happening, it's very close to us because we are Kurds," Hosgur said.

Hosgur and Sal Bazidi are co-chairs of the Kurdish community center in Burlingame. In San Francisco they've raised relief money and sent letters, emails and called local congress people to ask for more U.S. help.

"A lot of suffering is going on right now. We have family, we have friends, we have everybody and it's a very heartbreaking time, a tough time right now," said Sal Bazidi of Burlingame.

Bazidi says his brother is at one of the refugee camps in Turkey right now, sending these photos back of refugees and all the children caught in limbo.

"We need allies, like the United States, like the European Union. We need to pressure them and say hey, give them their rights," Bazidi said.

The United States has taken in 1,500 refugees from Syria along with providing monetary aid. Many people will be anticipating Secretary of State Kerry's presentation on Wednesday.