TURKEY 7TH ANNUAL TIP REPORT: OVERVIEW AND

UNCLAS ANKARA 000458 SIPDIS SIPDIS SENSITIVE DEPARTMENT FOR G/TIP, G, INL, DRL, PRM DEPARTMENT FOR IWI, EUR/SE, EUR/PGI DEPARTMENT FOR USAID C O R R E C T E D C O P Y (TEXT) E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KCRM PHUM KWMN SMIG KFRD ASEC PREF ELAB TU SUBJECT: TURKEY 7TH ANNUAL TIP REPORT: OVERVIEW AND PREVENTION REF: A. 06 ANKARA 6672 ¶B. 06 SECSTATE 202745 ¶1. (U) Sensitive but unclassified. Please protect accordingly. ¶2. (U) Post's responses are keyed to questions in Reftel A. This is part 1 of 3 (septel). Embassy point of contact is Cathy Westley, telephone number 90-312-455-5555 X 2513, fax number 90-312-468-4775. Westley (FS-03) spent approximately 80 hours in preparation of this TIP report. Istanbul political officer Christopher Friefeld (FS-04) spent approximately 10 hours in preparation of this report. Deputy Political Counselor Kelly Degnan (rank: FS-02) spent approximately 2.5 hours in preparation of this report. -------------- Overview -------------- ¶A. (SBU) Turkey remains a destination and transit country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and some forced labor. Though no territory within the country is outside government control, porous borders and a liberal visa regime provide a comfortable environment for traffickers smuggling victims to, within, and through Turkey. There are no reliable estimates of the number of internally or internationally trafficked victims beyond formally identified victims. The GOT and IOM keep reliable numbers of identified victims. The Istanbul Shelter NGO, Human Resources Development Foundation (HRDF),the Ankara Shelter NGO, Foundation for Women's Solidarity (FWS),and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) combined to repatriate 191 foreign victims in 2006, a decline from 220 in 2005. The Ministry of Interior reports 246 identified victims in ¶2006. Of the 191 assisted by IOM in 2006, the source countries were distributed as follows: Moldova (59),Russia (39),Ukraine (33),Kyrgyzstan (24),Uzbekistan (16), Azerbaijan (9),Turkmenistan (4),Georgia (2),Bulgaria (2), Kazakhstan (1),Belarus (1),Armenia (1). According to IOM statistics, the most vulnerable group of persons are women between the ages of 18 and 24 who are trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation. ¶B. (SBU) The GOT continues to take the issue of trafficking in persons seriously and has taken significant measures within the rating period to prevent, combat and prosecute trafficking. The Turkish President signed into law amendments (passed by the Turkish parliament on December 5) to two key articles in the Turkish Penal Code (TPC) that will improve anti-trafficking efforts in Turkey once implemented (ref b and septel). Lawmakers added forced prostitution to Article 80, the primary anti-trafficking article, and removed forced prostitution from Article 227, the prostitution and pimping article. Up to now, prosecutors had tended to use the less stringent Article 227 to try cases against traffickers as a majority of trafficking crimes in Turkey involve forced prostitution. With the amendments, lawmakers have ensured that traffickers will be tried under the appropriate, tougher provision, Article 80. Now, victims will be assured of automatic protection, legal counseling and health care. Traffickers will be subject to stricter sentencing requirements of eight to twelve years. Statistics on prosecution of TIP-related crimes will be more reflective of the real story as most TIP crimes are tracked under Article 80 prosecutions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates the change to be reflected in implementation by March. Law enforcement forces launched investigations against 422 individuals in 2006, up from 379 in 2005. Convictions of traffickers rose to 17 cases involving 36 persons according to statistics through June 2006, up from 9 convictions between January and September, 2005. During the rating period, the GOT signed a bilateral cooperation protocol to fight trafficking with Kyrgyzstan in September 2006, in addition to previously signed protocols with Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova. The MFA claims good cooperation via these protocols with Moldova particularly, and to a lesser extent Ukraine and Belarus. The GOT is undertaking a series of visits to Georgia in February and March to improve law enforcement cooperation with Georgia. The GOT continued to support a focused public awareness campaign reaching out to victims, law enforcement, and customers. A toll-free 24-hour hotline for victims of trafficking continues operating. Since May 2005, calls to the hotline have resulted in 109 rescued individuals. During the rating period, the GOT continued to support the IOM-implemented public awareness campaign begun in 2005: one advertising the hotline, and the other appealing to the strong sense of family in Turkey by revealing that one-third of the women trafficked to Turkey are mothers. Most victims enter Turkey willingly and some arrive with the knowledge that they will work illegally in the sex industry. Most, however, initially expected to work as models, waitresses, dancers, domestic servants, or in other regular employment. Many such victims are trafficked by persons from their home country in cooperation with Turkish traffickers. Once in Turkey, traffickers typically confiscate the victims' personal documents and passports and force victims into confinement where they are raped, beaten into submission, and intimidated by threats of retaliation against the victims' family members. ¶C. (SBU) There are credible reports that some law enforcement officials received bribes either to smuggle aliens or turn a blind eye to illegal prostitution. Salaries for police officers are relatively low. The GOT does not lack the resources to aid victims; it provides funding directly to the two trafficking shelters in Istanbul and Ankara (septel). The Ministry of Health provides free medical and psychiatric services to victims of trafficking and assisted 155 victims admitted to shelters in 2006. ¶D. (SBU) The MFA, which chairs the National Taskforce, updates its counter-trafficking website periodically, at least every six months after a taskforce meeting. The GOT, however, has had limited success in implementing a government-wide system for reliably monitoring and assessing its anti-trafficking efforts, particularly regarding arrests, prosecutions, convictions, and sentencing of traffickers. The MFA provides a yearly assessment of its anti-trafficking efforts to the USG. -------------- Prevention -------------- ¶A. (U) The Government of Turkey acknowledges that trafficking is a problem in this country. ¶B. (U) Government agencies involved in anti-trafficking efforts include the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Health, Interior (which includes the Turkish National Police and the Jandarma (paramilitary rural police)),Justice, and Labor; the Directorate General for Social Services and Child Protection; and the Directorate General on the Status of Women. The MFA serves as national coordinator for the government's task force on human trafficking. ¶C. (U) Turk Telecom and the GOT began operation in May 2005 of a new toll-free hotline number, 157, for victims of trafficking. Operators who speak Russian, Romanian, English and Turkish man the hotline 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In conjunction with the hotline, the IOM conducted an international trafficking campaign from June 2005 to September 2006 that promoted prevention of TIP across the Black Sea region. In addition to the USD 600,000 funding from the USG, the GOT contributed USD 100,000. In August 2006, IOM began implementing a similar project with funds from the Government of Norway and the Swedish Interational Development Agency, with the full cooperation of the GOT. In Turkey, authorities continued to distribute small passport inserts to travelers entering the country at key border crossings, although during the rating period IOM and the Istanbul shelter HRDF suggested that the insert campaign should be examined to determine whether it was the most effective outreach method to potential victims. Turkish consulates continued to hand out the inserts to visa applicants in source countries. The passport inserts publicized the hotline and included warning signs of trafficking. Billboards in major sea ports and regional airports in Turkey, Moldova and Ukraine also advertised the hotline. The campaign also included stepped up training for law enforcement, and medical, psychological and direct assistance to trafficked individuals. The IOM began a trafficking awareness campaign entitled "Have You Seen My Mother?" in February 2006. At the heart of the campaign was a 30-second commercial, filmed in Moldova with four Moldovan children, asking where their mothers are because the children miss them. It appealed to the Turkish strong sense of family and especially to potential clients. Poster space was donated by the Istanbul, Ankara, Trabzon, Antalya, and Izmir municipalities, as well as by airport authorities in Istanbul, Trabzon and Antalya. Embassy officers observed that these posters remained on display throughout the rating period. The Turkish National Police and Jandarma continued comprehensive training programs for their cadres during the reporting period (septel). ¶D. (U) The GOT supports programming to keep children in school. UNICEF and the Ministry of Education continued its "Haydi Kizlar Okula" (Let's go to school, girls) campaign across the country. The goal of the campaign was to close the gender-gap in primary school enrollment. With a USD 6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, the Turkish Ministries of Labor and Education, the International Labor Organization and IMPAQ International continued a project combating exploitive child labor through education in Turkey that began in September ¶2005. Objectives of the project include raising awareness of the importance of education for all children and improving and mobilizing a wide array of actors to improve and expand educational infrastructures; strengthening formal and transitional education systems that encourage working children and those at risk of working to attend school; strengthen national institutions and policies on education and child labor; and ensuring the long-term sustainability of these efforts. In June 2006, the Turkish Directorate General on the Status of Women organized a regional conference called "Assessment of Regional Needs and Tendencies in Combating Human Trafficking -- the Role of NGOs" in Antalya, Turkey. It sought to seek the contributions, cooperation and services of civil society in preventing TIP and assisting trafficking victims. Participants included representatives from Moldova, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Russia, Uzbekistan, Belarus and NGOs with TIP expertise. ¶E. (SBU) IOM reports good cooperation with the Task Force and law enforcement. HRDF and FWS continue to be impressed and pleased with the cooperation of law enforcement contacts. ¶F. (SBU) The GOT does not monitor immigration and emigration patterns for evidence of trafficking. Passport inserts advertising the 157 hotline continue to be distributed at some points of entry, including the Istanbul, Trabzon and Antalya airports and the Istanbul and Trabzon seaports. ¶G. (U) The Director General for Consular Affairs at the Turkish MFA spearheads the GOT's anti-trafficking initiatives, and is the National Coordinator for the GOT's Counter Trafficking Task Force. The Taskforce, chaired by the MFA since its establishment in 2002, is composed of representatives from the Ministries of Health, Interior, Justice, and Labor, plus the Directorate General for Social Services and Child Protection, and the Directorate General on the Status of Women, State Planning Organization, Office of the Prime Minister-Human Rights Presidency, IOM, HRDF, FWS, as well as Ankara and Metropolitan Municipalities. The Government also participates in anti-trafficking initiatives through the OSCE, the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI),the Council on Europe, NATO, the International Center for Migration Policy Development, Interpol, Europol, the Berne Initiative, the Budapest Process, the Global Commission on International Migration and Core Group of States, the Issyk-Kul Dialogue, the European Committee on Migration, CIREFI, MEDA, and the Stability Pact Task Force on Trafficking in Human Beings. During the past year, the Government implemented bilateral and multilateral protocols with neighboring countries and regional groups to encompass anti-trafficking law enforcement agreements, including the cooperation protocols first signed with Georgia in March 2005 and Ukraine in June 2005, Moldova in February 2006, Ukraine in June 2005. The GOT signed a bilateral cooperation protocol to fight trafficking with Kyrgyzstan in September 2006. The Prime Ministry Public Employees Ethics Board, established in 2004, monitors all public employees, with the exception of the President, parliamentarians, ministers, armed forces members, the judiciary and university employees. ¶H. (U) The Taskforce recommended and the government adopted a National Action Plan for TIP in March 2003. All members (including NGOs) of the Taskforce were involved in developing the action plan. The 2003 action plan has been disseminated. A new action plan will be formulated with the conclusion of a Twinning Project with Germany and Austria on "Strengthening Institutions in the Fight Against Trafficking in Human Beings" (septel). Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/ankara/ WILSON