VAN: A GLIMPSE INTO TURKEY'S REMOTE EAST

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 ANKARA 001837 SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: EINV ECON BTIO PGOV EAID TU SUBJECT: VAN: A GLIMPSE INTO TURKEY'S REMOTE EAST ¶1. (U) Sensitive but unclassified. Not for internet distribution. ¶2. (SBU) SUMMARY. Two Embassy Econoffs recently visited the city of Van, a regional center in Turkey's remote east along the border with Iran. They found a pleasant lakeside city struggling to deal with a huge influx of internal migrants. Villagers abandoning the fields for the city have caused the population to swell to twice its official size of 325,000 and have strained public services to the breaking point. With unofficial unemployment figures well over 50 percent, its economic potential hampered by an unstable security situation and lack of infrastructure, and its future uncertain after a string of broken GOT development promises, Van is in many ways a microcosm of the larger eastern region. Local officials and businessmen noted that they regularly receive GOT and EU delegations looking to develop the area, but that while progress had been made on a small scale, when push came to shove they were frequently left standing alone. END SUMMARY. ¶3. (U) Two Embassy Econoffs traveled to the city of Van to assess conditions on the ground and to meet with local officials and businessmen regarding development needs in the region. They met with: Omer Ozcan, Deputy Governor for International Affairs; Zahir Kandasoglu, President of the Van Chamber of Commerce; Burhan Yenigun, Mayor of Van; and Kadri Salaz, President of the Van Young Businessman's Association. They also traveled to the Customs border posts in Gurbulak and Kapikoy on the Iranian border (report to follow septel). The City by the Lake -------------- ¶4. (U) Van is a pleasant city located on the shores of Lake Van, Turkey's largest lake, roughly fifty kilometers west of the Iranian border. It has been continuously occupied for over 3000 years and was once the capital of the Urartu civilization. It currently has an official population of around 350,000, but all local contacts agreed that the true figure is somewhere between 650,000 and 750,000 due to a large influx of migrants from the surrounding villages and provinces, tens of thousands of whom were forcibly evacuated from their villages in the 1990s as part of the GOT's counter-insurgency campaign against the PKK. Van is the capital of Van province and also provides some regional governmental services to the nearby provinces of Agri, Bitlis, Hakkari, Mus, and Siirt. ¶5. (SBU) According to the Chamber of Commerce, the province of Van is roughly 90 percent Kurdish in ethnicity and 10 percent Turkish, with nearly all of the Turks living in the city of Van proper (Comment: Official statistics do not provide any ethnic breakdown. End comment.) Van is among Turkey's poorest and least developed provinces. Kadri Salaz stated that per capita income is only 840 dollars a year. Where Did All These People Come From? What Can We Do With Them? -------------- -------------- ¶6. (SBU) All sources agreed that the biggest challenge Van faces is the influx of migrants from surrounding villages and the economic and social impact of their arrival. Mayor Yenigun noted that a city designed for 350,000 people is being asked to support more than twice that number, and admitted frankly that the necessary resources are not available. He observed that 60 percent of the city's residents do not have access to running water and that 65 percent lacked access to other basic infrastructure such as electricity or clean drinking water. Without assistance either from Ankara or foreign sources, he claimed, the city would simply not be able to meet the basic needs of its residents. He acknowledged that the EU, GOT, and German Development Bank (GDB) had started several development initiatives, but described them as being ANKARA 00001837 002 OF 004 "too small" and "underfunded." At one point he stated that "If an assistance program isn't going to be in the millions of dollars, then it's not worth bringing it here. Our problems are so large in scope that a few hundred thousand dollars here and there solve nothing." ¶7. (SBU) Deputy Governor Ozcan stated that the challenges presented by internal migration can only be overcome with a multi-pronged approach. Potential migrants need to be given a reason to stay in their villages, he claimed, and therefore rural training programs focusing on more effective farming and husbandry techniques need to be developed and implemented. With these new skills, rural residents can earn enough to sustain a more comfortable lifestyle and will have less incentive to leave for the city. ¶8. (SBU) For the migrants that have already arrived, Ozcan suggested that a new social infrastructure needs to be built to integrate them into the city, noting that "they have come to the city, but they are still not a part of it." He said that as part of its integration efforts the government had established several "social centers" in Van in cooperation with NGOs and civil society. The goal of these centers is to provide courses for poor women to finish (or start) their education and also to provide basic social services such as childcare so that the women will actually have the time to attend classes. The centers also serve as a mechanism to encourage the participation of newly- arrived migrants into the social fabric of the city. He noted that the centers that have already been built have been very effective, but that four to eight additional centers are needed. ¶9. (U) The Chamber of Commerce noted that the waves of immigrants contribute to an unemployment problem that is already grim. Officially, unemployment is around 16 percent - the Chamber stated that the true figure is probably closer to 50-55 percent. They also pointed out that Van's unemployment swells even further during the harsh winters, when whole sectors such as animal husbandry and transportation essentially shut down. ¶10. (SBU) Kadri Salaz at the Young Businessmen's Association observed that the lack of employment opportunities is especially devastating for the young, whether they are migrants or native residents of Van. The paucity of available jobs discourages the young from bothering to study, he claimed, making them even less qualified for jobs that do appear. He also stressed that the region's security problems were directly tied to its unemployment problem, stating that a young man with a job of any sort - even a waiter making minimum wage - would not "go to the mountains" (a reference to joining the PKK). Many Development Delegations, Little Development -------------- --- ¶11. (SBU) Both the Deputy Governor and the President of the Chamber noted that they regularly receive delegations from Ankara and from foreign aid programs, all of whom are interested in developing the region. These visits are so frequent that the Governor's Office has drawn up an Action Plan outlining the needs and opportunities of the region so that development donors can simply pick a program and fund it (this program is directed toward meeting the needs of internally displaced persons). The Chamber has similarly developed dozens of project plans in response to the requests of visiting delegations. ¶12. (SBU) Both expressed disappointment, however, at the level of funding that has actually arrived, stating that it was not proportionate to the level of need. Ozcan said that he had hosted a very positive delegation from the UK Embassy several months earlier, but that none of the promised aid ever materialized, nor had he even been contacted ANKARA 00001837 003 OF 004 again. ¶13. (SBU) While Ozcan restricted his criticism to foreign donors, Kandasoglu also questioned the GOT's actual commitment to developing the region. He noted that the Chamber had designed a project to create a "technology city" intended to take children off the street and provide them with a variety of services, including Internet access and vocational courses that would provide a small wage in order to encourage the children to attend. The center would also have had adult education courses focused on developing job skills, as well as seminars on importing and exporting. Kandasoglu claimed that the project had identified an ideal piece of land near the university and had obtained pledges for approximately 90 percent of the required ten million dollars in funding when the central government unexpectedly allocated the land for a different purpose. The pledged funding evaporated and the project collapsed. Although he was still hopeful that they would eventually be able to build the center, he described the government's actions as "unhelpful." Small Success Stories -------------- ¶14. (SBU) Despite the overall negative picture, both Ozcan and Kandasoglu said that good progress had been made on a small scale and that funding had been secured for a number of promising initiatives. In addition to the successful social centers described in para 7, Ozcan noted that a microfinance NGO was started to provide small loans to housewives. Over 700 people have participated to date, and the repayment rate has been 100 percent. He predicted that microfinance should grow rapidly (both in terms of need and availability) as more people became aware of the opportunity and more NGOs entered into the space. ¶15. (SBU) Although the mayor dismissed development assistance to date as inadequate, he did mention that the German Development Bank has funded three projects to the tune of 11 million euro, and the EU has allocated 45 million euro for projects in Van and three nearby provinces, 30 million of which has been spent. Recent news reports indicate that the EU will be spending hundreds of millions more in the region as part of the accession process, but it is not yet clear how much of this will be spent in Van. ¶16. (U) Kandasoglu provided a list of EU-financed projects that the Chamber had either begun or planned for the near future. These included: an Animal Husbandry Improvement Project (2.9 million euro); a Human Resources Center (1 million euro); a Honey Production and Packaging Integrated Facility (2.9 million euro); an Export Development Project (3.5 million euro); a training hotel for hospitality services (3.1 million euro); a Small and Medium Enterprise Development Center (2 million euro); the New Hopes Project for Street Children to Achieve a New Life (58,000 euro); and a project to inform public institutions and local administrations about human rights and democracy (41,000 euro). As noted, the German Development Bank has also been active in Van. ¶17. (SBU) Comment: It is a bit disingenuous to complain about how funds are never forthcoming and then to list out projects worth millions of euro. When taken in the context of the vast sums promised for development of the east and southeast, however, the development assistance delivered to date appears small. The problem of "broken promises" may therefore be more about exaggerated expectations - the promises have been so extravagant that even substantial sums can seem insignificant. End comment. The View from the Outside: Maybe Life Isn't So Bad -------------- -------------- ¶18. (SBU) Van is certainly a poor city, but the ANKARA 00001837 004 OF 004 general impression from driving around is not one of a seething hotbed of unemployed migrants suffering from absolute impoverishment. The roads are generally in good repair and construction sites dot the city, filled with apartment blocks that look reasonably comfortable. The main streets are lined with stores of all varieties that were doing brisk business (except for the restaurants, which were all closed during the day because of Ramadan - a reflection of the general religious conservative bent of the region). Even in the poorer suburbs of the city where open sewers provided a less-than- charming fragrance, the houses looked to be solidly constructed and the children appeared reasonably well-fed and well-clothed (although they should probably have been in school). ¶19. (SBU) The countryside outside of Van is also less grim than the migration statistics would lead one to believe. The roads north and east of town are in good shape - many of them better than some roads in Ankara - and the countryside alternates between plowed fields and grazing livestock. The villages are clearly not wealthy, but neither are they filled with mud hovels. The houses, while small, are well-constructed and are generally connected to electrical lines. The road leading south and west from Van (ironically, toward many of the more famous tourist attractions) is in much worse shape, but is currently being repaved. There is a permanent jandarma checkpoint on the road east of town and one on the road north to Gurbulak, but traffic was flowing smoothly through both. The preceding should not be understood to mean that Van is in any way a wealthy or developed region. It is undeniably an impoverished part of the country, especially when compared to the prosperous west. If its people live merely in low-level misery as opposed to abject poverty, then that is still a cause for concern. But the evidence of economic activity and new construction provides some hope that the truly grim economic and social situation of the city and region may eventually improve. ¶20. (SBU) Comment: Van is a city with substantial challenges and pressing needs, and one that in many ways reflects the problems of the larger eastern region. To meet those needs, significant investment in job creation and social integration projects is needed - whether from the private sector, the government, or foreign donors - and local officials and businessmen have plans in hand just waiting for the money to appear. The AKP government has done more for rural development, particularly in the east, than many of its predecessors, but the need for sustained investment and political measures to address the Kurdish issue remain acute. End comment. WILSON