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"We are waiting only", Habib says. "We live here in despair. This is not living, this is not life". Of the 5.000 people who seek asylum at the UNHCR in Ankara each year, just 10% are resettled, says Ahmet Icduygu a professor who has researched human trafficking for 15 years. "These people are at the doors of Europe. They are not going to give up now," says Regina Boucault of the International Organisation for Migrations (IOM) Ankara. |
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Anywhere from 250.000 to 1 milion foreigners are in Turkey at any given time, Boucault says. She describes Turkey as the "passage obligee" for people - mainly war-weary Afghans and Iraqis - exiled by either poverty or persecution. Long an immigrant-generating nation, milion of Turks have for decades relocated to large diaspora communities in European capitals. Turkey is also one of the world's top three producers of refugees, along with Iraq and Iran: Every year 25.000 people, mainly from the troubled Kurdish southeast, seek asylum abroad. |
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Despite the backlash, the Europe Union provides one milion illegal aliens with jobs each year, says Icduygu, a far more powerful lure than fears of hatred or discrimination. Illegal migration is also a vital part of Turkey's crisis-racked economy, reaping millions of dollars in foreign currency. About 75% of migrants in Turkey turn to smugglers, mainly those using informal networks of relatives or friends who manage their small businesses with mobile telephones. |
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"In southeastern Turkey, border crossings are a tradition, it's not thought of as smuggling or a crime", Icduygu says. Migrants pay smugglers up to 3.000 US $, but the price hardly guarantees safe passage. Police this week discovered the bodies of three Bangladeshis who had suffocated in a container truck and were then discarded in a roadside titch in Istanbul. Dozens have died in recent years when their boats capsized in the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. Others have been killed in minefields peppering Turkey's land border with Greece. |
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Habib fears undertaking that tripwith his wife and small children and he distrusts Turkish smugglers. Those who brought him across the border then to Istanbul sold him fake UNHCR papers and bilked him of his money and his wife's gold. But he won't rule out the perilous journey either. "We will never go back to Iraq", Habib says, "and we can't stay here forever. Sooner or later the waiting must end". |
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