Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
09ASHGABAT1330
2009-10-23 09:42:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Ashgabat
Cable title:  

TURKMENISTAN: VICTIM RECOUNTS TRAFFICKING ORDEAL

Tags:  KTIP PHUM PGOV PREL TX TU 
pdf how-to read a cable
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DE RUEHAH #1330/01 2960942
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INFO RUCNCLS/ALL SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIA COLLECTIVE
RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
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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)

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
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