This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 ANKARA 005002 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR G/TIP, G, INL, DRL, EUR/PGI, EUR/SE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL KCRM PHUM KWMN SMIG KFRD PREF TU TIP IN TURKEY
SUBJECT: TIP IN TURKEY: TURKISH MEDIA ATTENTION, AUGUST 15- 
30, 2004 
 
 
¶1. (U) In response to G/TIP inquiries about anti-TIP public 
information campaigns, post provides as examples the 
following TIP press reports.  Text of articles originally 
published in Turkish is provided through unofficial local 
FSN translation. 
 
¶2. (U) Published August 26, 2004 by Minsk Belarusian 
Television 1 in Russian: 
     TITLE: Belarusian Police Catch Human Traffickers in 
     Western Region 
     BEGIN FBIS TRANSLATED TEXT:  Because Belarus is located 
     in the very center of Europe, it has to battle 
     international crime.   Law-enforcement officers in 
     Brest Region have opened a third human-trafficking case 
     since the start of this year.   An attempt to smuggle 
     out three women for sexual exploitation has been foiled 
     at the Makrany crossing point on the Belarusian- 
     Ukrainian border.   A 33-year-old Moldovan national 
     with a previous criminal record, who has long been 
     living in Brest, and his 29-year-old female compatriot, 
     currently residing in Turkey, have been apprehended as 
     primary suspects.   The women, as it turned out, were 
     supposed to be brought to that faraway land.  END TEXT. 
 
     [Video shows the suspects being arrested and the women 
     being released] 
 
     [Description of Source: Minsk Belarusian Television 1 
     in Russian -- State-owned national television; offers 
     uncritical pro-government line] 
¶3. (U) Published August 26, 2004 by Baku Space TV in Azeri: 
 
     TITLE: Azerbaijan: Deputy Interior Minister Says 
     Officials Involved in Human Trafficking 
 
     BEGIN TEXT: [Presenter] A conference on human 
     trafficking was held in the capital today. 
 
     [Correspondent over video of conference] Today's 
     conference, which was attended by representatives of 
     many NGOs, the OSCE and foreign countries, was based on 
     [Azerbaijani] President Ilham Aliyev's national action 
     plan against human trafficking.  Speakers at the 
     conference noted that human trafficking is becoming a 
     global issue.   The participants in the conference said 
     that human trafficking should be fought jointly and 
     stressed the necessity of applying a sensitive approach 
     to this issue.   The factors that create a breeding 
     ground for it should be investigated, and NGOs cannot 
     struggle by themselves to eradicate this problem. 
     Therefore, the issue is serious and it should assume 
     the form of an international fight.   Not only 
     Azerbaijani, but also foreign nationals have a role in 
     it.   But it should be especially noted that the victim 
     in this case cannot be regarded as a criminal. 
 
         The speakers said that human trafficking could 
     occur in different ways: forcibly, by means of 
     deception and voluntarily.   For example, stressing 
     that more women were involved in this process, the 
     conference participants said that some women visited 
     foreign countries and were sold there like slaves. 
     Others are deceived under the cover of finding jobs and 
     taken abroad where they become a subject of 
     trafficking.   Cases of trafficking in Azerbaijani 
     nationals are more often recorded in Turkey, the United 
     Arab Emirates and Pakistan. 
 
         [Zahid Dunyamaliyev, captioned as deputy interior 
     minister] People exported from Azerbaijan move 
     predominantly in these three directions. 
 
         [Correspondent] Dunyamaliyev said that some 
     officials were also involved in human trafficking. 
     The chairwoman of the State Committee on Women's 
     Problems, Zahra Quliyeva, said that the problem was 
     multi-sided and that it was necessary to teach people 
     to fight this problem.   The Milli Maclis [Azerbaijani 
     parliament] will again table the issue of human 
     trafficking in its autumn session and many laws will be 
     drawn up with regard to this problem. END TEXT. 
 
     [Description of Source: Baku Space TV in Azeri -- 
     Independent, pro-government TV, has been rumored to 
     have links with former presidential adviser Eldar 
     Namazov and with President Aliyev's daughter] 
 
¶4. (U) Published August 19, 2004 by the Christian Science 
Monitor: 
 
     TITLE: Stopping the 'Natasha' Trade 
 
     BEGIN TEXT: In the sex trafficking world, the victims 
     are called "Natashas," a generic label for women and 
     girls transported across borders and forced into 
     prostitution. 
 
     This despicable business is part of a growing 
     international trade in humans, including for labor, 
     which the US State Department estimates at 800,000 to 
     900,000 people a year. 
 
     But sex traffickers may have met their match in 
     Southeastern Europe, which, in the wake of the Balkans 
     chaos and communist meltdown, is a trafficking hot 
     spot. 
 
     With US assistance, a unique program based in Bucharest 
     is making excellent headway against the traffickers. 
     The name of the program is a mouthful - the Regional 
     Center for Combating Transborder Crime of the Southeast 
     European Cooperative Initiative - but it's worth every 
     syllable. 
 
     In June, for instance, more than 1,000 police officers 
     swept the region and identified 545 traffickers. Of 
     those, 328 were charged. It was the third sweep for 
     human traffickers - mainly in the sex trade - since the 
     program began in 2001. 
 
     The June effort represents remarkable law-enforcement 
     coordination among 13 countries, several of which one 
     might assume do not have the funds, personnel, or the 
     will to do this work. That's why they deserve naming: 
     Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, 
     Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia 
     and Montenegro, Slovenia, Turkey, and Ukraine. 
 
     Another US-sponsored group plans to replicate this 
     program in former Soviet Union countries. With each 
     arrest, the world's Natashas have a chance to reclaim 
     their identities. END TEXT. 
 
¶5. (U) Published August 18, 2004 by the Anadolu News Agency: 
 
     TITLE: Security Meeting Between Turkey And Iran 
     BEGIN TEXT: VAN - The 38th 'sub-security meeting' was 
     held between Turkey and Iran on Wednesday. 
     Governor of Khvoy of Iran Mohammad Emin Rizazade and 
     other officials, who came to Van from Iran to attend 
     the meeting held once every three months, met Van 
     Governor Hikmet Tan. 
     Governor Tan told reporters, ''Van province has 285 km 
     of border with Iran, thus, meetings continue with 
     officials of Iran's Urumiyah, Khvoy and Salmas cities 
     about border security.'' 
     Reminding, ''Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip 
     Erdogan during his visit to Iran, had meetings with 
     Iranian officials on activities of terrorist 
     organization'' Tan said, ''We will discuss activities 
     of PKK terrorist organization, illicit drug and human 
     trafficking which are high on the agenda.'' 
     Under Ankara Agreement, which was signed between Turkey 
     and Iran, two countries have held sub-security meetings 
     once every three months in border cities of Iran and 
     Turkey since 1995. END TEXT. 
¶6. (U) Published August 15, 2004 by the Hamburg Welt am 
Sonntag (Internet Version-WWW) in German: 
 
     [Report by Friedemann Weckbach-Mara: "Human 
     Trafficking: Major New Mafia Business; Old Clans Made 
     Italy Turnstile for Illegal Migration, Including to 
     Germany"] [FBIS Translated Text] 
 
     BEGIN TEXT: When German Interior Minister Otto Schily 
     talks about "the crime of the inhuman smuggling of 
     illegal immigrants," you cannot fail to notice his 
     anger.   The rising tide of illegal migration across 
     the Mediterranean Sea had been ignored for quite some 
     time.   Then, Schily had to take quite a beating when 
     he proposed that the European Union should establish 
     reception camps for refugees in Africa. 
 
         In the next few weeks, Schily plans to search 
     intensively for solutions with his colleagues in the 
     Mediterranean states that are also affected. 
     Cooperation between Italy and Tunisia is seen as a 
     model in this respect.   Two years ago, the two 
     countries agreed on a package to stem illegal 
     migration.   It contains economic assistance for 
     Tunisia, a quota for the legal immigration of 2,000 
     Tunisians per year, and police cooperation.   The first 
     successes are now tangible. 
 
         Italy has been forced to do something.   The reason 
     is that, according to the findings of German security 
     authorities, the country has become "the turnstile of 
     illegal migration" to the countries of the old European 
     Union, which have removed the controls on their 
     internal borders under the Schengen Treaty.   On 
     Wednesday [11 August] alone, three boats carrying more 
     than 200 refugees landed on the island of Lampedusa 
     situated south of Sicily. 
 
         New intelligence reports, of which Welt am Sonntag 
     has copies, cite figures of 1.6 million legal and 
     300,000 illegal migrants to Italy annually.   For many 
     of them, this is only the transit route to Germany. 
 
         The reports reinforce the suspicion that the 
     pullers of the strings of illegal migration are the 
     organized gangs.   They are assumed to carry out their 
     trafficking business in connection with drugs and arms 
     smuggling.   The main player is Sacra Corona Unita 
     based in Apulia, southern Italy, which cooperates with 
     smugglers from Albania, Russia, and Turkey. 
 
         The second player involved is the Camorra.   It 
     also maintains close links with Albanian and Russian 
     gangs and also with Kurdish, Nigerian, and Romanian 
     groups, as well as the Maghreb Mafia based in Tunisia 
     and Morocco.   Caserta, home of the Camorra clans of 
     the Casalesi, has meanwhile become the capital of 
     illegal migration to Italy.   In Sicily, the Cosa 
     Nostra is said to cooperate with gangs from the Maghreb 
     and Nigeria.   The meeting point of illegal migration 
     from Africa is Marsala, which is under the control of 
     the d'Amico, Licari, and Ala-Filipello clans. 
 
         Chinese gangs are seen as being of growing 
     significance.   They smuggle their victims, disguised 
     as tourists and carrying false passports, from Asia 
     into Italy and on to the north.   The most important 
     transit route out of Italy leads from Verona and 
     Bolzano to Austria and on to Germany.   Other routes go 
     via Como and Switzerland or from Ventimiglia on the 
     Gulf of Genoa via France to Germany. 
 
         "For these traffickers, people are cargo, like 
     drugs, for example.   Transport in small boats costs 
     between $4,000 and 5,000, air travel with forged 
     documents costs $10,000 to 30,000," Bavarian Interior 
     Minister Guenther Beckstein (Christian Social Union) 
     told Welt am Sonntag. 
 
         According to intelligence service information, 
     Turkish gangs now earn more money from human 
     trafficking than from drugs.   More than 150,000 
     illegal immigrants per year come to Germany, above all, 
     from Iraq, with numbers from Africa and China 
     increasing. 
 
         In the first half of 2004, police apprehended 
     18,500 foreigners without residence permit in railway 
     stations, airports, seaports, and a 30-kilometer-wide 
     strip along the borders.   Last year, the figure was 
     21,300.   The drop is mainly due to the fact that since 
     eastern enlargement on 1 May, citizens of the 10 new EU 
     member states are no longer counted.   When they work 
     illegally in Germany with only a tourist visa, this is 
     only seen as an infringement of regulations. 
 
         "Illegal migration will gain in importance in 
     Europe, because increasing numbers of people want to 
     escape the worsening of their living conditions in 
     Africa, Arab countries, and East Asia," Beckstein 
     warned.   This is why Schily's suggestion to set up 
     reception camps in North Africa together with the 
     European Union and the United Nations is correct. 
 
         German Red Cross President Rudolf Seiters specified 
     the terms: agreements between European and African 
     states; UN approval; observance of the Geneva refugee 
     convention; and speedy processing of the 
     applications.   "Under such circumstances, the proposal 
     of providing decent accommodation at home would be 
     thoroughly acceptable." 
 
     [Description of Source: Hamburg Welt am Sonntag 
     (Internet Version-WWW) in German -- Sunday edition of 
     Die Welt, Hamburg's right-of-center daily].  END TEXT. 
 
EDELMAN