TIP IN TURKEY: TURKISH MEDIA ATTENTION, September

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 ANKARA 005948

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
SUBJECT: TIP IN TURKEY: TURKISH MEDIA ATTENTION, September
16-30, 2005


1. 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. Published by Bu Gun on Saturday, September 17:

TITLE: Fire to Prostitution

BEGIN TEXT: A fire started by the explosion of a
propane gas cylinder revealed a prostitution nest.
Prostitutes were nearly killed.

An explosion of a propane gas cylinder in a tea room of
the Yesil Payas Hotel in Erzurum revealed that the
hotel was being used as a place of prostitution. In a
short period, the first floor of the hotel was engulfed
in flames. As the fire department was fighting the
fire, women were saved from their beds from certain
death.

The Hotelier is Injured

A team of firefighters found 28-year-old Azeri Gullare
Bayramova and hotel worker Gurbuz Boz in a half-dressed
and injured state. Also saved by the firefighting team
were Azeri citizens Arzu Navdar, Vefa Huseyinova,
Huseyin Cakinay and Kyrgyz citizen Bayova Braley and
Sulaliyova Aysunov, all practicing prostitution. END
TEXT.


3. Reported by Sabah on Monday, September 19:

TITLE: Human Smugglers are Organized

BEGIN TEXT: The measures taken by the Interior
Ministry against human and immigrant smuggling have
begun to bear fruit. Although the number of smugglers
who charge between $1000-5000 per person has increased,
the number of illegal immigrants has decreased. In
2003, 1,599 immigrants and 72 smugglers were captured;
last year there were 479 victims and 95 organizers
captured. In 2003, there were 263 operations against
smuggling, and in 2004 324 operations, many of them
done with international cooperation. Among the
organizers were Turks, a Greek ship captain, Iraqis and
Iranians. Smugglers smuggle immigrants particularly
from Africa, China, Iraq, Iran and Egypt to Europe.

According to the new Turkish Penal Code, those involved
in human smuggling and trafficking can be punished with
imprisonment from three to eight years. Financial
resources obtained through these crimes are considered
as money laundering and that money and vehicles used
are confiscated.

For the fact that some European countries accept the
political asylum demands of illegal immigrants for
various reasons and that international humanitarian
assistance organizations are providing financial
assistance to people who are subject to illegal
passages, immigrant smuggling is believed to be
accelerating. END TEXT.


4. Published by Kathiemerini (Greece's International
English Language newspaper) on Tuesday, September 20:

TITLE: Turkish coast guard fire on immigrant boat, one
dead

BEGIN TEXT: Turkish coast guards opened fire on a boat
carrying about 30 illegal immigrants to Greece
overnight, authorities said yesterday. One Syrian
immigrant was killed and two people, including a Greek
crew member, were injured. The coast guard opened fire
when the Greek boat did not heed calls to stop and
attempted to escape toward the Greek island of Chios
off the Aegean port city of Izmir, authorities said.
Two Greek crew members were expected to be charged with
human trafficking. END TEXT.


5. Also published by Kathiemerini on Tuesday, September 20:

TITLE: Trafficker caught on Samos after chase as Turks
open fire on Greek smugglers

BEGIN TEXT: Coast guard officials said they detained
29 illegal immigrants on the island of Samos yesterday
and arrested the captain of the ship that transported
them into the country. After a six-hour manhunt,
officials located the boat and man in charge of the
vessel, a Turkish national. The illegal immigrants,
from different countries, were taken to the island's
migrant detention center. Meanwhile, two Greeks were
arrested in Turkey after being fired at coast guards
while attempting to smuggle 30 migrants to Greece. END
TEXT.


6. Written by columnist Saves Ay and published in Sabah on
Thursday, September 22:

TITLE: From Ecstasy to Heroin and Girls who are Sex
Slaves
BEGIN TEXT: When ecstasy was found in Ata's blood,
eyes were again focused on this disease. If you are
following the comprehensive study by zlem and Gungor
from the Central News Agency, you might have already
read that this disease is spreading to almost the
entire nation.

I want to relate a true story and by increasing the
tremor, bring it to the attention of those who are
slumbering.

I'll tell you the story of a black well that sucks up
not only our own citizens, but foreign youngsters as
well.

The newly-rich and those who want to be a part of high
society have striking demands. They order beautiful
eastern bloc women from international human
traffickers.

Their goal is to make these young and well-bred women
be tools for their sexual fantasies and turn them into
sex slaves in return for a few hundred dollars.

Ceyan, a young and beautiful musician from the Ukraine,
is one of them and let me tell you her story. She is
lucky because an honest Anatolian young man fell in
love with her. He (Ibo) fell in love with her at first
sight and began a struggle against this bloody and
vicious dark gang.

First he managed to pull Ceyan out of the prostitution
and heroin quagmire. He saved her from the brothel of
Oksana, who serves as a pimp with the codename "Blonde
Dragon." Later he took Ceyan, who frequently suffered
from heroin withdrawal, to treatment and waited with
her for hours as an outpatient in the emergency ward of
hospitals. His goal was to take her to AMATEM (a
special hospital for addicts) where she would receive
real therapy. But he neither had the legal nor the
financial means to do such a thing. Ibrahim had a hard
time but he applied to the Istanbul Police Department.
With information obtained from Ceyan and Ibrahim, the
police raided many addresses. At each address they
encountered many young women who were drug addicts. In
secret places they found heroin, hashish and ecstasy,
known as the "bridge pill."

These evil pills are called "bridge" because they let
its users pass on to heroin eventually. When the
investigation continued in depth, they reached a gang
leader called Omer, whose codename was "Black Snake."

After long work, police determined where the Black
Snake's house and store were. Raiding his home, police
found foreign women, Turkish youngsters, one and a half
kilos of heroin, 3,000 USD in cash and a 6.35 mm
pistol.

Police found out that Omer was in touch with a Van-
based heroin network and that the Narcotics Police had
been searching for him already. Thus the entire gang
was pulled down and the criminals were brought to
justice.

As a result of all her help, Ceyan was offered
treatment. She bid goodbye to her love Ibrahim and
entered AMATEM.
In conversations with her doctors, she said, "I was a
person who was going to a conservatory and representing
my country by playing the cello. First ecstasy and
later hashish and other pills, and later without
realizing how, I began to use heroin." END TEXT.

7. Reported by Anatoly Janis on Friday, September 23:

TITLE: Prostitution Operation in Izmir

BEGIN TEXT: Four women of Ukrainian citizenship and a
Turkish man who reportedly forced them into
prostitution were captured in the Hatay District of
Izmir.

The Izmir Police conducted an operation and captured
the four Ukrainian women who were brought to Turkey to
serve as nannies, but actually were forced into
prostitution.

The Public Order Department Morals Police conducted the
operation on a house on Inonu Street where foreign
women allegedly were forced into prostitution.

The police team, with the orders of the prosecutor,
raided the house and captured Ukrainian citizens O.K.
(19),O.O. (21),T.S. (23) and L.Z. (21).

The women were taken to the police department where
they claimed they were brought to Turkey to work as
nannies. They claimed that some people here took away
their passports and forced them into prostitution.
They were turned over to the Foreigners' Police.

G.K., who was charged with human trafficking, was sent
to the Izmir Judicial Hall. G.K. as a record of human
trafficking and the information found on him was shared
with the Ukrainian police. END TEXT.


8. Published by Milliyet on Thursday, September 29 and
Vatan and Sabah on Friday, September 30:

BEGIN TEXT: Five people who allegedly forced a 14-year-
old girl to enter relations with many people in return
for money were captured and two are being searched for.

Five people were captured in Antalya and two are being
searched for forcing a 14-year-old girl to enter
relationship with many people in return for money.

AA reporter has learned that HA (14) ran away from home
and began to work at a bar. MB (28),GA (38),IE (23)
and MCE (26),who were working at the same bar, forced
her to be with men in return for money and later forced
her to go with two unidentified people in return for
1000 YTL. These people reportedly forced her to work
as a prostitute at a house that belonged to TB (43) in
the Mayan District.

HA called the 155 police hotline when she got the
chance. The police saved her when she told them that
she was kept in a house and was forced into having sex
with men in return for money.

MB, GA, IE and MCE, who forced her into prostitution,
and TB, the owner of the house, were detained. The
police are searching for the other two people.

HA, who was forced to be with many men, is three and
half months pregnant. END TEXT.


9. Published by Mail&Guardianonline (www.mg.co.za) on
Thursday, September 29:

TITLE: Deaths highlight EU immigration troubles

BEGIN TEXT: The deaths of five people during a night
of clashes on the Spanish-Moroccan border on Thursday
once again threw into focus the growing pressure
exerted by illegal immigration on the gateways into the
European Union across the Mediterranean Sea.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero met
his Moroccan counterpart Driss Jettou in Seville on
Thursday for talks on the problem following the unrest
on Morocco's border with Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on
the North African coast.

Five people died before dawn when hundreds of would-be
immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa attempted to storm
the border fence around the enclave, just across the
Strait of Gilbraltar that divides Africa from mainland
Europe.

The European Commission called on its member to bolster
cooperation with third countries to avert similar
incidents.

Spain's troubles are by no means unique among its
fellow EU member-states that border the Mediterranean.
All face a daily challenge in trying to contain illegal
immigration, while also respecting the rights of
potential asylum-seekers.

According to the Italian interior ministry, more than
7,500 would-be immigrants landed in the first half of
2005 on the southern island of Lampedusa, a focal point
for people arriving from the coats of Libya and
Tunisia.

Malta faces a similar challenge, compounded by its
small size, and multiplied in gravity since the island
joined the European Union.

Valetta on September 27 warned the arrival of 235
stowaways over the weekend threatened to plunge the
island nation into a humanitarian crisis, and appealed
to Brussels for help.

"It is equivalent to the arrival of 23,500 people in
Sicily," said Maltese Interior Minister Tonio Borg.

In Cyprus, heightened vigilance against illegal
immigration landed the authorities in trouble in June,
when a group of Chinese travel agents invited to
promote the island was mistakenly detained by airport
immigration officials.

In contrast to Malta and Cyprus, which effectively have
one coastline to monitor, Greece has dozens of islands
and islets scattered across the Aegean Sea facing
Turkey, a region where Greek coastguard patrols make
scores of interceptions every month.

The coastguard reported 3,047 arrests in 2004, and
1,280 interceptions by June 30 this year.

A more perilous option is the overland route across the
Greek-Turkish border, which was mined following the
Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus in 1974, and where
more than 70 migrants have been killed since 1994,
according to a toll compiled by Agence France Presse.

Turkey, which aspires to join the European Union, has
long been a major route for immigrants from poor Asian
and African countries trying to sneak into prosperous
Europe, but officials say the influx has been somewhat
reduced after Ankara toughened sanctions against
trafficking.

About 387,000 illegal immigrants and about 5,000
suspected traffickers were detained between 2000 and
2004, official statistics show.

According to a 2003 report by the international
organization for Migration (IOM),the annual number of
illegal immigrants transiting through Turkey may be
estimated to be around 200,000.

The IOM report predicted that the business of sneaking
migrants across Turkey likely involved half a billion
US dollars (415 million Euros) per year, on the
assumption that a migrant pays an average of 2,500 USD
to traffickers.

Earlier this month, the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said governments
should do more to facilitate migrant disembarkation,
lest ship captains be discouraged from even fishing
them out of the water in future.

Italy, which recently expelled a number of illegal
immigrants to Libya under a bilateral accord never made
public, has been roundly criticized by the European
Court of Human Rights and the European Parliament for
not allowing people to apply for asylum.

On September 20, thirteen European parliamentarians
accused Rome of emptying an immigrant holding camp on
Lampedusa island, just before they arrived to inspect
it.

They also argued that cramped conditions at the camp
raised concern of human rights abuse. END TEXT.


10. Reported by ITAR-TASS on Friday, September 30:

TITLE: Human trafficking business booming in
Tajikistan

BEGIN TEXT: Tajikistan has tightened punishment for
the engagement in prostitution, but the illegal
business is booming just the same, Nuritdin Amirkulov
from the presidential administration said at the
Dushanbe conference on human trafficking on Friday.

He said the Tajik police had opened 59 criminal cases
on the human trafficking charge in 2005. This is
nearly twice more than last year, he said.

This September alone the police exposed nine cases of
the engagement in prostitution and exposed several
human trafficking businesses. The women are
transported to brothels in the Middle East, the United
Arab Emirates, Turkey, India and some other countries.

Twenty-six women were returned to Tajikistan this
summer as a result of lengthy negotiations with Dubai
authorities, a Tajik deputy interior minister said.

No fewer than 40 Tajik women are still in white slavery
in United Arab Emirates, according to the official
statistics.

Conference delegates said the problem can be resolved
only in cooperation with non-governmental and
international organizations. END TEXT.

MCELDOWNEY