TURKMENISTAN: VICTIM RECOUNTS TRAFFICKING ORDEAL

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ASHGABAT 001330 SIPDIS STATE FOR INL/GTIP AND SCA/CEN E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/23/2019 TAGS: KTIP PHUM PGOV PREL TX TU SUBJECT: TURKMENISTAN: VICTIM RECOUNTS TRAFFICKING ORDEAL IN TURKEY ASHGABAT 00001330 001.2 OF 003 Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Sylvia Reed Curran. Reasons 1.4(b) and (d) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: (C) Poloff and INL/G-TIP officer spoke with a Turkmen taxi driver who recounted a nightmarish, six-month stay in Turkey two years ago. During much of that time, he was homeless, and engaged off-and-on by employers who refused to pay him. Like many Turkmen, both men and women, who reportedly migrate to Turkey on their own in search of employment, he was not recruited by a third party or intermediary, but traveled as a tourist, as Turkmen citizens may enter Turkey for 30 days without a visa. For the first four months of his stay, he found irregular employment with three different Turkish businesses and was promised a salary at the end of 30 days, but received no remuneration. Towards the end of his stay, he was engaged as a forklift operator, was paid as promised, and was able to save several thousand dollars, after which he returned to Turkmenistan. He now counsels youth at an NGO in Turkmenabad regarding the dangers of trying to work illegally in Turkey. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (C) On October 16, Poloff and visiting INL/G-TIP Program Analyst spoke at lenghth with Ruslan, a 27-year old taxi driver from Turkmenabad who traveled on his own to Istanbul in 2007 with plans to contact Turkmen friends who had migrated there earlier. He had made no prior arrangements with prospective employers. He said he chose to leave Turkmenistan and seek work abroad after he was judged liable in an auto accident and saddled with a $3000 debt that he could not pay. When he arrived at Istanbul Airport, he found a barrage of Turkish, Uzbek and Turkmen waiting in the arrivals hall, seeking out work or offering jobs to Central Asian males who appeared to have come looking for work. Ruslan was carrying only $200. When the friends he expected to meet did not appear, he left the airport and took a bus into town in search of his friends' home. It was already dark, however, and when he could not find the address, he decided to spend the night on a public bench. HARD WORK AND NO PAY ¶3. (C) Three days later, still unable to locate his friends and running out of money, Ruslan met a Turkish man on the street who told him, "Follow me, I have a job for you." The �A;man originally described the job as "wiring" for a telephone provider, but in reality it required installing it underground while wading in a tunnel of water. The Turkish employer had offered him a salary of $450/month, working five days per week, ten hours per day. After 25 days, he asked the employer to pay him, but was told he must complete 30 working days to be paid. When 30 days had passed and he again asked to be paid, his employer still paid him nothing and threatened to have him deported. Therefore, Ruslan left and wandered the streets for about ten days with no money to buy food. ¶4. (C) Ruslan later encountered an elderly Turkish man and explained his predicament to him. The man took him to a bakery located in the basement of a building, where he was given a job and offered $500/month. Most of the bakery equipment was broken, so Ruslan had to do everything by hand, and spent 24 hours a day there. After 23 days, he asked to be paid, but was told he would be paid after 30 days. When the month had elapsed, he was paid nothing, although a mechanic employed at the bakery gave him $130 of his own salary out of pity. He again left and wandered the streets in search of more work. (NOTE: When asked why he never sought assistance during his time in Turkey or tried to contact a well-publicized trafficking hotline, Ruslan said that he was aware that such resources existed, but had no intention of returning to Turkmenistan until he found work and was able to pay off his debts back home. END NOTE.) ¶5. (C) Another Turkish citizen Ruslan encountered told him not to try to work in the city, where he also risked arrest and deportation, but to travel to the nearby village of ASHGABAT 00001330 002.2 OF 003 Gebze, populated by farms, where work was supposedly easy to find. He set out for Gebze on a bus, but disembarked when the bus reached a police check point 22 kilometers from his destination, and decided to get there on foot by walking through a wooded area. When he entered the forest, however, he became disoriented and was lost for 11 days, with nothing to eat. At that point, he met a shepherd, who told him he was just a few kilometers from Gebze and guided him to his destination. FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE ¶6. (C) A passing truck near the village stopped and the driver offered him a job as a shepherd and then instructed him to wait at a meeting place. However, the truck driver did not appear until hours after the arranged meeting time. He offered Ruslan $500 per month, with partial salary payments every ten days, to work as a farm hand caring for 40 cows. He also gave Ruslan lodging in a one-room hut with no stove or refrigerator. A Turkish farm worker with whom he was to work ran away several days later. The employer provided Ruslan with bread, tomatoes and water, but nothing else. When 19 days had passed, with no salary given, Ruslan approached his employer. The employer appeared with several friends and demanded that Ruslan cook and serve them dinner. When he asked about his salary, they began to mimic and harass him and threaten him physically. The farm owner told him to handover his passport, but he lied and said he had left it with an earlier employer. He took his belongings and left until 3 a.m. When he returned to the farm, he looked for a place to spend the night where the farm owner would not find him. He and his friends returned early in the morning and found him, however, and woke him up and continued to harass him and demanded that he wash their cars. (Ruslan learned later that the same employer had previously employed 15 different Turkmen farm hands and paid none of them anything. He also allegedly beat one of them severely, almost to the point of death). ¶7. (C) When the farm owner and his friends had left, Ruslan said he found a 20-liter can of gasoline and poured it around the farmhouse, barn and chicken coop, and then continuing pouring all the way -- several kilometers -- to the main road, and then set the entire property ablaze. He told us he did so in response to his own mistreatment, and "for the other 15 Turkmen." He boarded the next bus he saw coming on the main road and traveled about 40 kilometers. A BREAK... AT LAST ¶8. (C) Several days later, Ruslan said he encountered a large truck that had slid into a ditch: The driver was sitting by the road waiting for a tow truck to arrive. Ruslan asked how much he would give him to drive the truck out himself, and the driver offered him $50 and a pack of cigarettes, but told him he was certain it could not be done. When Ruslan successfully drove the truck back onto the road, the driver, named Mohamad, gave him $100 and a carton of cigarettes and told him to call him if he needed a job. Ruslan told him about all the problems he had encountered in Turkey, but Mohamad assured him that he could work at his brother's factory in Antalia, and that his brother, named Shaban, was a very "good and pious man, and prayed five times a day." Ruslan traveled to the factory and was offered job as a forklift operator: He was to be paid $700 a month and had a dormitory room provided where ample food was available for the workers at all times. He was given weekends off and provided with a cell phone. Ruslan described everyone at the factory as "observant Muslims," and said that after 15 days, Shaban paid him his salary in advance and gave him $1000, even more than he had promised. He subsequently raised his salary to $1300, and later to $1500. ¶9. (C) After working at the factory for three months, Ruslan had saved more than $4000 and decided to return to ASHGABAT 00001330 003.2 OF 003 Turkmenistan: His employers (Mohamad and Shaban) bought him an air ticket home, took him to the airport, and en route, took him shopping for clothes and bought him a gold watch. They also gave him an additional $1000 in cash. As Ruslan had overstayed his 30-day entry permit, he was considered a "deportee" and had to wait for a place on the flight. Turkish border officials questioned him about whether he had been employed in Turkey, but he lied and said he had not worked and had been visiting friends. ¶10. (C) Back in Turkmenabad, Ruslan is driving a taxi again and says he "barely earns enough to buy food." Nevertheless, he says he would never again try to work illegally abroad as "it's just not worth it." Through the NGO Bildirje's office in Turkmenabad, Ruslan talks to young people, tells them about his experience and urges them not to consider looking for work in Turkey. ¶11. (C) COMMENT: By some accounts, there are many Turkmen living and working Turkey, and almost all are undocumented, having traveled there as either students or tourists and overstayed their visas. Most, like Ruslan, are not recruited from Turkmenistan, but travel there on their own and fall into labor situations where they are exploited and reportedly often physically abused. END COMMENT. CURRAN