TIP IN TURKEY: MEDIA ATTENTION, OCTOBER 14-31, 2004

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 06 ANKARA 006150 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: MEDIA ATTENTION, OCTOBER 14-31, 2004 ¶1. (U) In response to G/TIP inquiries, national and international media sources published the following news articles about TIP in Turkey. Text of articles originally published in Turkish is provided through unofficial local FSN translation. ¶2. (U) Published October 31, 2004 by the Turkish Language Cumhuriyet News: TITLE: NO VISA REQUIREMENT FOR GEORGIANS BEGIN TEXT: A decision by the Artvin Governor now allows Georgian citizens to stay in Turkey for 72 hours without a visa if they submit their passports to the police upon arriving in the port city of Hopa. This implementation aims at increasing tourist and commercial trips (to Turkey). Artvin Governor Orhan Kirli said that after the Georgian Government grants permission, Turkish citizens, too, would be able to travel to Georgia for short-term trips without a visa. END TEXT. ¶3. (U) Published October 31, 2004 by the Turkish Language Cumhuriyet News: BEGIN TEXT: Jandarma captured 37 Bengalis on the road to Bolu. The 37 people had been in a truck for three days. The driver was detained. The Jandarma offered food and water to the starving Bengalis. An investigation is going on. END TEXT. ¶4. (U) Broadcast October 28, 2004 by Pakistan-based GEO News Service in Urdu and English: TITLE: 530 deportees reach home from Oman TEXT: KARACHI: 530 Pakistanis arrested in Oman due to illegal entry arrived in Karachi after deportation from Muscat. They belonged to various parts of the country and were arrested during last two weeks while trying to enter illegally via sea route in the Gulf state to seek lucrative jobs. People involved in the human trafficking racket fetched thousands of rupees from these poor people and later disappeared leaving them in quandary. Some of them were caught while on their way because of strict security whereas majority were arrested after illegal entry. These Pakistani nationals were sent back through Al Fajr-II boat. Ansar Burney welfare trust arranged food, clothing and shoes for them at Ghas Bandar port. They will be allowed to leave for home after Immigration clearance. Some of the deportees told that Mand area of Balochistan became the international market of human trafficking where different rates have been fixed for Muscat, Dubai, Turkey, London and other countries. They were also complained about inhuman treatment and torture in jails. END TEXT. ¶5. (U) Published October 26, 2004 by the Turkish Language Anatolian News Agency: BEGIN TEXT: Sixteen of 23 defendants on trial for holding 17 people including minors by force for domestic and agricultural labor were released from prison with charges pending in Kozan's heavy penal court. Their trial will continue though. One suspect (Omer Binici) is still at large. An arrest warrant has been issued for him. Names of the defendants under arrest and released were (16): Ahmet, Recai, Abdurrahman, Husamettin, Mustafa, Feyzullah, Ibrahim, Ihsan, Sacit, Osman, Fatih, Isa, Lutfi Topaloglu, Halis Ozkal, Asaf Mercan, Mustafa Kutlu Defendants who are not under arrest: Ercan, Suleyman, Ibrahim, Cetin Topaloglu, Cumali Mercan, Mumtaz Dil. END TEXT. ¶6. (U) Published October 24, 2004 by the Detroit Free Press: TITLE: MARTA SALIJ: Sex on the auction block BY MARTA SALIJ, FREE PRESS BOOKS WRITER BEGIN TEXT: "Every 10 minutes, a woman or child is trafficked into the United States for forced labor,'" begins Gilbert King's incendiary book, "Woman, Child for Sale: The New Slave Trade in the 21st Century." Yes, into the United States. Every 10 minutes. About 50,000 slaves are brought into the United States each year, the CIA estimated in 1999. Worldwide, about 27 million people are enslaved -- twice the number that were victimized by the African slave trade. The slaves are usually young women and children. They come from Asia, Africa, Central America -- and in a fourth wave that began about a decade ago -- from the former republics of the Soviet Union. Some are enslaved to work in factories or as domestics. But a large and growing number are sex slaves, forced to work as prostitutes in Europe, the Middle East, the Far East -- and in the United States. They are young women trapped in nations devastated by economic collapse or war. Some are orphans. Then a seeming godsend appears: A job in a foreign country as a nanny, maid or waitress. Maybe the job is offered by a neighbor or an administrator at the orphanage. The girls sign up, sure that they can save themselves and their families. But once they are past their borders, they discover that they have been sold into the sex industry. They are taken to apartments in Germany, Israel and elsewhere. They are raped, beaten, burned, starved. They are locked in cellars or attics and warned that they will be killed if they try to escape. Then they are turned out to work bars and brothels and roadsides. Some are forced to service UN peacekeeping forces or U.S. contractors in various hotspots. Some are bought and sold yet again. If they try to go to the police, they are not believed. The police are often their clients or chums of the thugs who hold them. If they somehow escape, they are chased down and murdered -- sometimes even months after, when they've made it home. Some die of disease or of abortions or in childbirth. Some, of course, kill themselves. In this day and age This is all very hard to believe, I know. We are civilized people. Aren't we? This is the 21st Century. Isn't it? That is what I believed, until I read King's book and the even more furious work by Canadian journalist Victor Malarek, "The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade." No other books that I've read in my five years as a critic have demoralized me so much or have given me so little hope for humankind. The victimization is so complete that I despair at what can be done. But it is precisely books like King's and Malarek's that we civilized and free people must read and act upon because the evil is so great. Begin with Malarek's book, "The Natashas" because it is more visceral. Malarek concentrates on the trafficking of women from the former Soviet Union, particularly Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. His title comes from what the Israeli johns call the new prostitutes: Natasha the Russian. What makes Malarek's book a first must-read is the heartbreaking detail he gives. He has traveled throughout the Middle East and Europe, talking to the women, as well as to officials who are trying to stop the traffic -- and sometimes to officials who are not trying. In a chapter that will turn your stomach, Malarek describes his October 2001 visit to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. He accompanied members of the UN Trafficking in Prostitution Investigation Unit on raids through the U.S.-controlled sector. Malarek meets a Texas lawman, John Randolph, who works for DynCorp, the U.S. firm that recruits American police officers to work as international cops for the United Nations. Randolph tells Malarek about a raid the week before that rescued seven teenage sex slaves in a nearby town, all of whom told him that Americans had been their customers. Then Randolph's bosses at DynCorp learn about Malarek and things turn strange. A series of secret UN raids on other bars is suddenly scrapped by the U.S. military commander. Then, a UN internal affairs investigation into the aborted raids goes nowhere. Coincidence? Malarek can find out no more. Lucrative commodities Humans are now the third most lucrative commodity traded illegally, after drugs and guns, international law enforcement officials estimate. King's book, "Woman, Child for Sale,"' includes all the statistics and background you could wish to have, including a catalog of what the world has tried, with little success, to do about it. How does the trade flourish? The basic fuel is the essential wickedness of people to persist in seeing other people as not human. Sexism and racism factor in, too. Malarek interviews the pimps and customers who argue that men cannot be expected to control their sex drives, so prostitution - - even using slaves -- is a social good. Others argue that if it weren't for the foreign slaves -- who are, by definition, subhuman -- men would brutalize their own women. Better theirs than ours, in other words. And -- I can barely type this -- some argue that they are helping the slaves by giving them food and shelter they couldn't get at home. There is plenty of money to be made, so greed is another fuel. And whatever greed cannot sustain, the well-machined brutality of the purveyors can. And who are these purveyors? The Russian mob, the Italian Mafia, Colombian drug cartels, the Chinese Triads and the Japanese Yakuza -- as well as gangs from the United States, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Serbia, Israel and Albania. Another fuel is the persistent belief by otherwise enlightened people that prostitution and other sex industries involve consenting adults. This is the fuel that proves most dangerous to the enslaved women. "To the casual observer," Malarek writes, "they blend in seamlessly with the women who have chosen to exchange money for sex. In their cheap makeup, sleazy outfits and stiletto heels, they walk the same walk and talk the same talk. They smile, they wink, they pose and they strut, but they do it because they know what will happen if they don't." And now, we civilized and free people have no excuse for not knowing, too. END TEXT. ¶7. (U) Published October 22, 2004 by the London Telegraph: It's OK for men to hit us, says wives' poll in Turkey More than a third of Turkish women believe they deserve to be beaten if they argue with their husbands, deny them sex, neglect children or burn a meal, according to a survey reported by the Anatolia news agency yesterday. The survey found that 39 per cent of women said their husbands were right to beat them. In rural areas, the figure rose to 57 per cent. As many as half of all Turkish women are estimated to be victims of physical violence in their families. The survey and report come at a crucial moment as the European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, has put pressure on the government to protect women. In the Anatolia poll, arguing with one's husband topped the list of justified reasons for domestic violence, followed by spending too much and neglecting children. The poll of 8,075 married women by Hacettepe University, Ankara, was funded by the EU and the Turkish government. "A culture of violence in Turkey is putting women in double jeopardy. Not only are many not safe in their own homes, but they also are denied access to justice," said William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA. Some acts of violence involve traditional practices, including so-called honour crimes and forced marriage. A study in east and southeast Turkey found that 45.7 per cent of women were not consulted about the choice of husband and 50.8 per cent were married without their consent. Women who refuse their family's choice are at risk of violence and even death. END TEXT. ¶8. (U) Published October 21, 2004 by the Turkish-language Anatolian News Agency: TITLE: SECURITY FORCES ARREST 16 ILLEGAL MIGRANTS IN AYVALIK BEGIN TEXT: BALIKESIR (A.A) - Security forces arrested 16 migrants in Ayvalik town of northwestern city of Balikesir on Thursday as they were about to set sail for Greek island of Lesbos. The migrants of Somalian and Mauritanian origin were taken into custody for violating Turkish borders and passport law. Security forces also arrested five persons for aiding and abetting to the illegal migrants. The migrants will be deported once the legal proceedings are completed. END TEXT. ¶9. (U) Published October 21, 2004 by the Turkish-language Anatolian News Agency: BEGIN TEXT: A Turkish citizen was sentenced by a Sisam Island court in Greece to 6 years and 9 months imprisonment and fined 29 thousand Euros for involvement in human trafficking. According to the Greek ANA news agency Vural Yavuz Selim was captured yesterday by the Coast Guard in Sisam after he took 13 Afghan citizens to that island. He will be sent to jail on Sakiz Island. He can apply to the appeals court but because of the type of crime he committed, he would still remain in jail until the appeals court reaches a decision. END TEXT. ¶10. (U) Published by the Scotsman News on October 17, 2004 with excerpts published in the Turkish-language Cumhuriyet News and Turkish-language Sabah News. TITLE: The tough battle against Europe's sex traffic shame BY CHRIS STEPHEN IN MOLDOVA BEGIN TEXT: ANNA'S nose is red from the cold. She has decided to tell her great secret while standing outside her farmhouse in a bleak part of southern Moldova, while her family eat dinner inside. Braced against the wind, she tells of when she realised she had become a sex slave. Last year, with her small farm bankrupt and her husband laid-off, she joined the huge stream of migrants leaving Moldova, heading for what she thought was domestic work in a family house in Turkey. She had seen TV commercials warning of the dangers of the sex trade but assumed she, as a married woman, would not be a target and, anyway, the agent who recruited her was a friend from the same village. She was desperate and the 100 a month she would earn would at least put food on the family table back home. After a few weeks of cleaning work, the woman of the house took the children away to visit relatives, and her boss invited friends around for a late night game of cards. Anna was told to stay late serving drinks. The card session grew more boisterous, the players more drunk, and Anna was puzzled - there seemed to be no money changing hands in the frenzied game. Then her boss broke the news. She was the prize. Later that night she was raped by one of her boss's friends. In the morning, her boss told her there would be more of the same. "He told me if I did not do as he said he would kill me," she said, her brown eyes watering. "He told me who would know? I was not registered with the police, I was not registered with anybody, I could simply disappear." Anna had become a victim of sexual trafficking, Eastern Europe's most notorious growth industry. Estimates by the United States put the number of girls and women trafficked for sex as more than half a million worldwide. Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, leads the way. More than 600,000 of the three million population are out of the country at any one time, most employed illegally. Belatedly, the Council of Europe is trying to stem the flow. Work began this month on an ambitious cross- border convention against trafficking, but many here in Moldova doubt it will stem the tide. "Rules will not be enough, the traffickers will always find a way through," Anna tells me. "Look around you. While conditions here stay as they are, women will always run away. There is nothing here for them." Her home village, kept secret at her request, lies in the heart of Gagauzia, a Turkish-speaking province once rich in agriculture. But eastern markets have dried up and the European Union, struggling with its Wine Lake, is not about to start importing Moldovan wine. The result is grinding poverty and a huge flow of migrants. While politicians wring their hands, the traffickers are getting smarter. In the past, they would smuggle women and girls on forged documents. Now they have hit on a much better idea - bribery. Women now pass borders on legal documents, visas and permits. "Trafficking could not exist without the complicity of Moldovan government officials at some level," says Alan Freedman, head of the Moldovan office of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). "You cannot move this number of people across the border without corruption." Moldovan president Vladimir Voronin has promised tough action, but with his bureaucrats also impoverished, it is a tall order. And even if corruption can be tackled, the root problem of poverty remains. "You have a Moldovan girl of 16 in a village, her prospects are of earning $25 a month in a canning factory," says Mr Freedman. "Frankly, the migration argument is extremely persuasive." He adds: "The best way to prevent trafficking is to create healthy communities." Some women, even when they realise the sexual slavery facing them, decide to stay, rather than return home to their bleak villages. In the West, there seems to be no shortage of men willing to pay for what amounts to rape. "Sometimes what they do is called prostitution, but what these women endure is not prostitution," says Tatiana Allamuradova of local support group, Contact. "These women are enduring slavery." Anna endured rape and occasional beatings in Istanbul for several months, then had a breakdown and fled home. Her story has a happy ending. She was given a small grant by IOM to buy livestock for her empty farm. She has turned the farm into a thriving business, and her husband now works for her as the book keeper. But she worries over whether to tell her husband, who assumes that she returned from a regular cleaning job. "I cannot take the chance," she says. "This place has old rules. Some women have done this, and the husbands have divorced them, and I don't want to be alone." END TEXT. ¶11. (U) Published October 14, 2004 by the Turkish language Sabah News: BEGIN TEXT: 100 illegal immigrants, including 88 Pakistanis, were captured in the Bahcelievler and Fatih districts of Istanbul. The Pakistanis in bahcelievler reportedly were brought to Istanbul through Dogubeyazit and Van. They reportedly were hoping to go to Greece in return for $7000. Those captured in Fatih were six Afghanis, four Iranians and two Iraqis. Some other illegal immigrants managed to escape. END TEXT. EDELMAN