Global IssuesMIGRATION: Tricky Gateway to a European Dream
Izmir has for years been luring migrants and refugees who dream of crossing into Europe.
But that is not always obvious in this city of three million situated on the Turkish Aegean coast 329 km south of Istanbul - until you take a walk through Basmane, a small neighbourhood in the heart of the city.
The narrow streets here are lined with small grocery stores, kebab restaurants and all kinds of small businesses. And there are little hotels where plenty of Africans and others migrants find accommodation.
'Basmane has a history of hosting populations on the move,' says lawyer Taner Kilic, president of the Association for Solidarity with Refugees (Multeci Der), an NGO that help refugees deal with the complex Turkish asylum system.
'For a long period this place hosted poor seasonal workers,' says Kilic. 'At the beginning of the 1980s thousands of internally displaced Kurdish people that arrived in Izmir settled here; now they own many of the small businesses you see around. Today it is migrants and refugees who hide here, waiting to pass into Europe.'
Not all migrants are here voluntarily. 'Very often they are dumped in Izmir by traffickers who promise to take them to Italy, elsewhere in Europe or Istanbul,' says Cavidan Saykan, a student at the University of Essex in the UK who is researching human rights in Izmir. 'Then they stay here trying to find a way to cross into Europe, or hoping they will manage to launch an asylum application.'
Turkey rates really low when it comes to treatment of people in need of international protection. Now, in agreement with the Turkish government, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNCHR) has undertaken the task of considering the status of non-European applicants, and then resettling those acquiring refugee status into third countries, because Turkey excludes them from local integration.
A 47 percent increase in asylum applications was registered from January to August last year compared to the corresponding period in 2007, according to UNHCR. The majority of new asylum-seekers are Iraqis, and all their applications are submitted for resettlement.
Asylum-seekers in Turkey must live in 30 designated 'satellite' cities while awaiting refugee status determination. They are subject to the often daily obligation to report to authorities in their municipality. During this period they have no access to employment or social aid, but they are required to pay a heavy fee to obtain a temporary residence permit.
But even after such restrictive institutional arrangements, refugees are not safe. Amnesty International's report on asylum procedures and refugees in Turkey published three months ago speaks of constant violation of their rights. Officials restrict their access to the asylum process, they often detain them arbitrarily, and physically abuse them before deporting them to countries where their life might be in danger.
'Sometimes we get phone calls from refugees and migrants who manage to hide their mobiles while in detention,' Orcun Ulusoy, coordinator for the Human Rights Agenda Association, an NGO that offers legal advice to refugees, told IPS.
'They are often locked up in inappropriate rooms because there is no available space at guest centres. They are guarded by the Turkish Gendarmerie, one of the toughest state security bodies in the country responsible for policing outside of big urban centres.'
All this leaves many with no choice but to try and take the informal route through places like Basmane.
Life has become organised here around migrants' needs. Small businesses and hotels provide for their basic needs, while smugglers who run the pathways to the coast and across the sea to Greece keep in touch with them through middlemen. 'Somehow an industry has been created here that facilitates the migration phenomenon,' says Ulusoy.
'Migrants are afraid to shift outside this area; they always stay here, buying food from the restaurants, sleeping in awful places for very small fees. People are not necessarily happy with their presence here but they work with them. Usually Arabs get better treatment, Africans the worst.'
Young foreigners are seen spending their time glued to mobile phones or chatting with others in shady cafes. They are killing time while they wait for a call from smugglers to attempt another crossing of the few miles of sea between the Turkish coast and the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.
The police do not seem to go after them in Basmane. The calmness this neighbourhood emanates would hardly lead anyone to suspect how dangerous the trip really is.
The luckiest will manage to cross soon, hoping not to get arrested by the Greek authorities who are cracking down on irregular migration. Others will wait months and try many times before they manage. And a few will lose their lives on the way.
According to Greek and Turkish coast guards, more than a thousand people have lost their lives trying to cross this passage over the last few years.
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service