TIP IN TURKEY: TURKISH MEDIA ATTENTION, AUGUST 15-

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 ANKARA 005002

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR G/TIP, G, INL, DRL, EUR/PGI, EUR/SE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL KCRM PHUM KWMN SMIG KFRD PREF TU TIP IN TURKEY
SUBJECT: TIP IN TURKEY: TURKISH MEDIA ATTENTION, AUGUST 15-
30, 2004



1. (U) In response to G/TIP inquiries about anti-TIP public
information campaigns, post provides as examples the
following TIP press reports. Text of articles originally
published in Turkish is provided through unofficial local
FSN translation.


2. (U) Published August 26, 2004 by Minsk Belarusian
Television 1 in Russian:
TITLE: Belarusian Police Catch Human Traffickers in
Western Region
BEGIN FBIS TRANSLATED TEXT: Because Belarus is located
in the very center of Europe, it has to battle
international crime. Law-enforcement officers in
Brest Region have opened a third human-trafficking case
since the start of this year. An attempt to smuggle
out three women for sexual exploitation has been foiled
at the Makrany crossing point on the Belarusian-
Ukrainian border. A 33-year-old Moldovan national
with a previous criminal record, who has long been
living in Brest, and his 29-year-old female compatriot,
currently residing in Turkey, have been apprehended as
primary suspects. The women, as it turned out, were
supposed to be brought to that faraway land. END TEXT.

[Video shows the suspects being arrested and the women
being released]

[Description of Source: Minsk Belarusian Television 1
in Russian -- State-owned national television; offers
uncritical pro-government line]

3. (U) Published August 26, 2004 by Baku Space TV in Azeri:

TITLE: Azerbaijan: Deputy Interior Minister Says
Officials Involved in Human Trafficking

BEGIN TEXT: [Presenter] A conference on human
trafficking was held in the capital today.

[Correspondent over video of conference] Today's
conference, which was attended by representatives of
many NGOs, the OSCE and foreign countries, was based on
[Azerbaijani] President Ilham Aliyev's national action
plan against human trafficking. Speakers at the
conference noted that human trafficking is becoming a
global issue. The participants in the conference said
that human trafficking should be fought jointly and
stressed the necessity of applying a sensitive approach
to this issue. The factors that create a breeding
ground for it should be investigated, and NGOs cannot
struggle by themselves to eradicate this problem.
Therefore, the issue is serious and it should assume
the form of an international fight. Not only
Azerbaijani, but also foreign nationals have a role in
it. But it should be especially noted that the victim
in this case cannot be regarded as a criminal.

The speakers said that human trafficking could
occur in different ways: forcibly, by means of
deception and voluntarily. For example, stressing
that more women were involved in this process, the
conference participants said that some women visited
foreign countries and were sold there like slaves.
Others are deceived under the cover of finding jobs and
taken abroad where they become a subject of
trafficking. Cases of trafficking in Azerbaijani
nationals are more often recorded in Turkey, the United
Arab Emirates and Pakistan.

[Zahid Dunyamaliyev, captioned as deputy interior
minister] People exported from Azerbaijan move
predominantly in these three directions.

[Correspondent] Dunyamaliyev said that some
officials were also involved in human trafficking.
The chairwoman of the State Committee on Women's
Problems, Zahra Quliyeva, said that the problem was
multi-sided and that it was necessary to teach people
to fight this problem. The Milli Maclis [Azerbaijani
parliament] will again table the issue of human
trafficking in its autumn session and many laws will be
drawn up with regard to this problem. END TEXT.

[Description of Source: Baku Space TV in Azeri --
Independent, pro-government TV, has been rumored to
have links with former presidential adviser Eldar
Namazov and with President Aliyev's daughter]


4. (U) Published August 19, 2004 by the Christian Science
Monitor:

TITLE: Stopping the 'Natasha' Trade

BEGIN TEXT: In the sex trafficking world, the victims
are called "Natashas," a generic label for women and
girls transported across borders and forced into
prostitution.

This despicable business is part of a growing
international trade in humans, including for labor,
which the US State Department estimates at 800,000 to
900,000 people a year.

But sex traffickers may have met their match in
Southeastern Europe, which, in the wake of the Balkans
chaos and communist meltdown, is a trafficking hot
spot.

With US assistance, a unique program based in Bucharest
is making excellent headway against the traffickers.
The name of the program is a mouthful - the Regional
Center for Combating Transborder Crime of the Southeast
European Cooperative Initiative - but it's worth every
syllable.

In June, for instance, more than 1,000 police officers
swept the region and identified 545 traffickers. Of
those, 328 were charged. It was the third sweep for
human traffickers - mainly in the sex trade - since the
program began in 2001.

The June effort represents remarkable law-enforcement
coordination among 13 countries, several of which one
might assume do not have the funds, personnel, or the
will to do this work. That's why they deserve naming:
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia,
Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia
and Montenegro, Slovenia, Turkey, and Ukraine.

Another US-sponsored group plans to replicate this
program in former Soviet Union countries. With each
arrest, the world's Natashas have a chance to reclaim
their identities. END TEXT.


5. (U) Published August 18, 2004 by the Anadolu News Agency:

TITLE: Security Meeting Between Turkey And Iran
BEGIN TEXT: VAN - The 38th 'sub-security meeting' was
held between Turkey and Iran on Wednesday.
Governor of Khvoy of Iran Mohammad Emin Rizazade and
other officials, who came to Van from Iran to attend
the meeting held once every three months, met Van
Governor Hikmet Tan.
Governor Tan told reporters, ''Van province has 285 km
of border with Iran, thus, meetings continue with
officials of Iran's Urumiyah, Khvoy and Salmas cities
about border security.''
Reminding, ''Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan during his visit to Iran, had meetings with
Iranian officials on activities of terrorist
organization'' Tan said, ''We will discuss activities
of PKK terrorist organization, illicit drug and human
trafficking which are high on the agenda.''
Under Ankara Agreement, which was signed between Turkey
and Iran, two countries have held sub-security meetings
once every three months in border cities of Iran and
Turkey since 1995. END TEXT.

6. (U) Published August 15, 2004 by the Hamburg Welt am
Sonntag (Internet Version-WWW) in German:

[Report by Friedemann Weckbach-Mara: "Human
Trafficking: Major New Mafia Business; Old Clans Made
Italy Turnstile for Illegal Migration, Including to
Germany"] [FBIS Translated Text]

BEGIN TEXT: When German Interior Minister Otto Schily
talks about "the crime of the inhuman smuggling of
illegal immigrants," you cannot fail to notice his
anger. The rising tide of illegal migration across
the Mediterranean Sea had been ignored for quite some
time. Then, Schily had to take quite a beating when
he proposed that the European Union should establish
reception camps for refugees in Africa.

In the next few weeks, Schily plans to search
intensively for solutions with his colleagues in the
Mediterranean states that are also affected.
Cooperation between Italy and Tunisia is seen as a
model in this respect. Two years ago, the two
countries agreed on a package to stem illegal
migration. It contains economic assistance for
Tunisia, a quota for the legal immigration of 2,000
Tunisians per year, and police cooperation. The first
successes are now tangible.

Italy has been forced to do something. The reason
is that, according to the findings of German security
authorities, the country has become "the turnstile of
illegal migration" to the countries of the old European
Union, which have removed the controls on their
internal borders under the Schengen Treaty. On
Wednesday [11 August] alone, three boats carrying more
than 200 refugees landed on the island of Lampedusa
situated south of Sicily.

New intelligence reports, of which Welt am Sonntag
has copies, cite figures of 1.6 million legal and
300,000 illegal migrants to Italy annually. For many
of them, this is only the transit route to Germany.

The reports reinforce the suspicion that the
pullers of the strings of illegal migration are the
organized gangs. They are assumed to carry out their
trafficking business in connection with drugs and arms
smuggling. The main player is Sacra Corona Unita
based in Apulia, southern Italy, which cooperates with
smugglers from Albania, Russia, and Turkey.

The second player involved is the Camorra. It
also maintains close links with Albanian and Russian
gangs and also with Kurdish, Nigerian, and Romanian
groups, as well as the Maghreb Mafia based in Tunisia
and Morocco. Caserta, home of the Camorra clans of
the Casalesi, has meanwhile become the capital of
illegal migration to Italy. In Sicily, the Cosa
Nostra is said to cooperate with gangs from the Maghreb
and Nigeria. The meeting point of illegal migration
from Africa is Marsala, which is under the control of
the d'Amico, Licari, and Ala-Filipello clans.

Chinese gangs are seen as being of growing
significance. They smuggle their victims, disguised
as tourists and carrying false passports, from Asia
into Italy and on to the north. The most important
transit route out of Italy leads from Verona and
Bolzano to Austria and on to Germany. Other routes go
via Como and Switzerland or from Ventimiglia on the
Gulf of Genoa via France to Germany.

"For these traffickers, people are cargo, like
drugs, for example. Transport in small boats costs
between $4,000 and 5,000, air travel with forged
documents costs $10,000 to 30,000," Bavarian Interior
Minister Guenther Beckstein (Christian Social Union)
told Welt am Sonntag.

According to intelligence service information,
Turkish gangs now earn more money from human
trafficking than from drugs. More than 150,000
illegal immigrants per year come to Germany, above all,
from Iraq, with numbers from Africa and China
increasing.

In the first half of 2004, police apprehended
18,500 foreigners without residence permit in railway
stations, airports, seaports, and a 30-kilometer-wide
strip along the borders. Last year, the figure was
21,300. The drop is mainly due to the fact that since
eastern enlargement on 1 May, citizens of the 10 new EU
member states are no longer counted. When they work
illegally in Germany with only a tourist visa, this is
only seen as an infringement of regulations.

"Illegal migration will gain in importance in
Europe, because increasing numbers of people want to
escape the worsening of their living conditions in
Africa, Arab countries, and East Asia," Beckstein
warned. This is why Schily's suggestion to set up
reception camps in North Africa together with the
European Union and the United Nations is correct.

German Red Cross President Rudolf Seiters specified
the terms: agreements between European and African
states; UN approval; observance of the Geneva refugee
convention; and speedy processing of the
applications. "Under such circumstances, the proposal
of providing decent accommodation at home would be
thoroughly acceptable."

[Description of Source: Hamburg Welt am Sonntag
(Internet Version-WWW) in German -- Sunday edition of
Die Welt, Hamburg's right-of-center daily]. END TEXT.

EDELMAN