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RUEHAH/AMEMBASSY ASHGABAT PRIORITY 1838
RUEHKB/AMEMBASSY BAKU PRIORITY 1327
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RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEHC/DEPT OF LABOR WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEAHLC/HOMELAND SECURITY CENTER WASHDC PRIORITY

UNCLAS ANKARA 000989 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR G/TIP (JENNIFER DONNELLY), G, INL, DRL, PRM 
DEPARTMENT FOR IWI, EUR/SE, EUR/PGI 
DEPARTMENT FOR USAID 
 
E.O. 12958:N/A 
TAGS: KCRM PHUM KWMN ELAB SMIG ASEC KFRD PREF TU
SUBJECT: TURKEY:  SIXTH ANNUAL TIP REPORT:  OVERVIEW AND 
PREVENTION 
 
REF: SECSTATE 03836 
 
¶1.  (U)  Sensitive but unclassified.  Please protect 
accordingly. 
 
¶2.  (U)  Post's responses are keyed to questions in Reftel A. 
 This is part 1 of 3 (septel).  Embassy point of contact is 
Linda Fenton, telephone number 90-312-455-5555 X 2513, fax 
number 90-312-468-4775.  Fenton (FS-04) spent approximately 
100 hours in preparation of this TIP report.  Political 
Counselor Janice G. Weiner (rank: FS-01) spent approximately 
one hour in preparation of this report. 
 
-------- 
Overview 
-------- 
 
¶A.  (SBU)  Turkey remains a destination and transit country 
for women and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual 
exploitation and some forced labor.  Though no territory 
within the country is outside government control, porous 
borders and a liberal visa regime provide a comfortable 
environment for traffickers smuggling victims to, within, and 
through Turkey. 
 
There are no reliable estimates of the number of internally 
or internationally trafficked victims.  The Istanbul Shelter 
NGO, Human Resources Development Foundation (HRDF), the 
Ankara Shelter NGO, Foundation for Women's Solidarity (FWS), 
and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) 
combined to repatriate 220 foreign victims in 2005, up from 
62 in 2004.  IOM reports that 23 of the victims the Turkish 
National Police identified refused assistance from IOM. 
According to HRDF, one victim is still in country on a 
humanitarian visa; one got married and stayed in Turkey; and 
one, after obtaining refugee status from UNHCR, was 
repatriated to a third country. 
 
The Ministry of Interior reports 256 identified victims in 
2005 and 28 from January through mid-February 2006.  The 
source countries were distributed as follows:  Ukraine (90), 
Moldova (73), Russia (29), Kyrgyzstan (26), Romania (11), 
Uzbekistan (10), Kazakhstan (9), Belarus (6), Georgia (7), 
Turkmenistan (6), Azerbaijan (14), Bulgaria (1), Armenia 
(1), Uganda (1). 
 
According to IOM statistics, the most vulnerable group of 
persons to be trafficked are women between the ages of 18 and 
¶24. 
 
¶B.  (SBU)  The GoT continues to take the issue of trafficking 
in persons seriously and has taken significant measures 
within the rating period to prevent and combat trafficking. 
 
The GoT signed protocols for cross-border and 
anti-trafficking cooperation in the rating period with 
Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova, and is expected to sign a 
similar protocol with Kyrgyzstan in March 2006. 
 
The GoT continued to strengthen its efforts to actively 
pursue a focused public awareness campaign reaching out to 
victims, law enforcement, and customers.  A toll-free 24-hour 
hotline for victims of trafficking began operation in May 
¶2005.  Since then, the hotline has handled nearly 1,000 
trafficking-related calls.  Seventy-four percent of the 
callers to the hotline are clients concerned that the women 
they have been with are actually victims of trafficking.  The 
interest of these clients was piqued by the two public 
awareness campaigns that IOM implemented and the GoT endorsed 
 
and supported:  one advertising the hotline, and the other 
appealing to the strong sense of family in Turkey by 
revealing that one-third of the women trafficked to Turkey 
are mothers.  The Ankara municipality completely refurbished 
and furnished a shelter, which opened in October 2005.  This 
FWS-run shelter is the second such shelter in Turkey. 
 
Most victims enter Turkey willingly and some arrive with the 
knowledge that they will work illegally in the sex industry. 
Most, however, initially expected to work as models, 
waitresses, dancers, domestic servants, or in other regular 
employment.  Once in Turkey, traffickers typically confiscate 
the victims' personal documents and passports and force 
victims into confinement where they are raped, beaten into 
submission, and intimidated by threats of retaliation against 
the victims' family members. 
 
¶C.  (SBU)  There are credible reportsthat some law 
enforcement officials received ribes either to smuggle 
aliens or turn a blind eye to illegal prostitution.  Salaries 
for poice officers are relatively low.  The GoT does ot 
lack the resources to aid victims.  The GoT in October 2005 
granted HRDF 150,000 YTL (approximately USD 114,000) to 
offset some of the cost of running the Istanbul shelter.  The 
Ministry of Health provides free medical and psychiatric 
services to victims of trafficking. 
 
¶D.  (SBU)  The MFA, which chairs the National Taskforce, 
updates its counter-trafficking website periodically, at 
least every six months after a taskforce meeting.  The GoT, 
however, has had limited success in implementing a 
government-wide system for reliably monitoring and assessing 
its anti-trafficking efforts, particularly regarding arrests, 
prosecutions, convictions, and sentencing of traffickers. 
 
---------- 
Prevention 
---------- 
 
¶A.  (U)  The Government of Turkey acknowledges that 
trafficking is a problem in this country. 
 
¶B.  (U)  Government agencies involved in anti-trafficking 
efforts include the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Health, 
Interior (which includes the Turkish National Police and the 
Jandarma (paramilitary rural police)), Justice, and Labor; 
the Directorate General for Social Services and Child 
Protection; and the Directorate General on the Status and 
Problems of Women.  The MFA serves as national coordinator 
for the government's task force on human trafficking. 
 
¶C.  (U)  Turk Telecom and the GoT began operation in May 2005 
of a new toll-free hotline number, 157, for victims of 
trafficking.  Operators who speak Russian, Romanian, English 
and Turkish man the hotline 24 hours a day, seven days a 
week.  Interestingly, 74 percent of the calls that have come 
into the hotline are from friends and clients of trafficked 
women. 
 
In conjunction with the hotline, the IOM launched an 
international trafficking campaign in June 2005 which 
promoted prevention of TIP across the Black Sea region.  In 
addition to the USD 600,000 funding from the USG, the GoT 
contributed USD 100,000. 
 
In Turkey, authorities distributed small passport inserts to 
travelers entering the country at key border crossings. 
Turkish consulates also handed out the inserts to visa 
applicants in source countries.  The passport inserts 
 
publicized the hotline and included warning signs of 
trafficking.  Billboards in major sea ports and regional 
airports in Turkey, Moldova and Ukraine also advertised the 
hotline.  Television commercials publicizing the number ran 
on channels in all three countries.  The campaign also 
included stepped up training for law enforcement, and 
medical, psychological and direct assistance to trafficked 
individuals. 
 
Using the balance of the USD 700,000, the IOM launched a 
second trafficking awareness campaign entitled "Have You Seen 
My Mother?" in February 2006.  At the heart of the campaign 
is a 30-second commercial, filmed in Moldova with four 
Moldovan children, asking where their mothers are because the 
children miss them.  It appeals to the Turkish strong sense 
of family and especially to potential clients.  Poster space 
was donated by the Istanbul, Ankara, Trabzon, Antalya, and 
Izmir municipalities, as well as by airport authorities in 
Istanbul, Trabzon and Antalya. 
 
The Turkish Jandarma printed an extra 150,000 copies of their 
TIP brochures entitled, "The Struggle Against Human 
Trafficking," which they distributed to police precincts and 
citizens nationwide.  Fifty thousand were published in 
English, 50,000 in Russian and the balance in Turkish.  In 
2004, the Jandarma had printed and distributed 9,000 
brochures.  The brochures outline what trafficking is, how to 
recognize a trafficked person, and what to do if someone is 
trafficked.  They are targeted to potential victims, as well 
as potential clients and the general public. 
 
¶D.  (U)  While there are no specific programs to prevent 
trafficking in Turkey, the GoT does support programming to 
keep children in school.  UNICEF and the Ministry of 
Education teamed up for the "Haydi Kizlar Okula" (Let's go to 
school, girls) campaign across the country.  The goal of the 
campaign was to close the gender-gap in primary school 
enrollment. 
 
The "Kardelenler" (snowdrop flower) scholarship campaign 
received heavy support from PM Erdogan's wife, Emine. 
Turkcell and the Association to Support Contemporary Life 
provided 5,000 scholarships to girls in 41 provinces last 
year to allow them to attend school. 
 
With a USD 6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, 
in September 2005 the Turkish Ministries of Labor and 
Education, the International Labor Organization and IMPAQ 
International launched a project combating exploitive child 
labor through education in Turkey.  Objectives of the project 
include raising awareness of the importance of education for 
all children and improving and mobilizing a wide array of 
actors to improve and expand educational infrastructures; 
strengthening formal and transitional education systems that 
encourage working children and those at risk of working to 
attend school; strengthen national institutions and policies 
on education and child labor; and ensuring the long-term 
sustainability of these efforts. 
 
The GoT played host to a conference in February 2006 
organized within the framework of the Democracy Assistance 
Dialogue (DAD) to develop an action platform to increase the 
role of women in public life in the region.  This was a 
follow-on to a June 2005 DAD symposium also held in Turkey. 
 
¶F.  (SBU)  According to IOM Turkey Chief of Mission 
Lindstrom, relations between IOM and government officials are 
limited by design; it is not the same relationship as NGOs 
have with source country officials.  She lamented, as did 
 
HRDF and FWS members, that there was not more financial 
support.  But, she added, both the Ankara and Istanbul 
municipalities have provided shelters and even paid many of 
the utilities.  In addition, municipalities around the 
country have posted advertisements for the "Have You Seen My 
Mother?" public awareness campaign. 
 
HRDF and FWS are pleased with the cooperation of law 
enforcement contacts.  Gulsen Ak of FWS was also impressed 
with the medical care victims receive, though she wished 
doctors would send a larger batch of medicine back with 
victims, instead of making them return frequently to the 
health care facility.  She is confident that the Ministry of 
Health will remedy the situation. 
 
¶G.  (SBU)  According to the MFA's Ozlem Kural, the GoT does 
not monitor immigration and emigration patterns for evidence 
of trafficking.  Kural indicated, however, that a border 
management action plan will be written in 2006.  Passport 
inserts advertising the 157 hotline continue to be 
distributed at points of entry, including the Istanbul, 
Trabzon and Antalya airports and the Istanbul and Trabzon 
seaports. 
 
¶H.  (U)  Ambassador Derya Kanbay, Director General for 
Consular Affairs at the Turkish MFA, spearheads the GoT's 
anti-trafficking initiatives, and is the National Coordinator 
for the GoT's Counter Trafficking Task Force.  Akif Ayhan is 
Taskforce Deputy Director.  The Taskforce, chaired by the MFA 
since its establishment in 2002, is composed of 
representatives from the Ministries of Health, Interior, 
Justice, and Labor, plus the Directorate General for Social 
Services and Child Protection, and the Directorate General on 
the Status and Problems of Women, State Planning 
Organization, Office of the Prime Minister-Human Rights 
Presidency, IOM, HRDF, FWS, as well as Ankara and 
Metropolitan Municipalities. 
 
The Government also participates in anti-trafficking 
initiatives through the OSCE, the Southeast European 
Cooperative Initiative (SECI), the Council on Europe, NATO, 
 
the International Center for Migration Policy Development, 
Interpol, Europol, the Berne Initiative, the Budapest 
Process, the Global Commission on International Migration and 
Core Group of States, the Issyk-Kul Dialogue, the European 
Committee on Migration, CIREFI, MEDA, and the Stability Pact 
Task Force on Trafficking in Human Beings.  During the past 
year, the Government expanded bilateral and multilateral 
protocols with neighboring countries and regional groups to 
encompass anti-trafficking law enforcement agreements, 
including cooperation protocols with Georgia in March 2005 
and Ukraine in June 2005, Moldova in February 2006, as well 
as signing a Readmission Agreement with Ukraine in June 2005. 
 A similar protocol will be signed with Kyrgyzstan in March 
¶2006. 
 
The Prime Ministry Public Employees Ethics Board, established 
in 2004, monitors all public employees, with the exception of 
the President, parliamentarians, ministers, armed forces 
members, the judiciary and university employees. 
 
¶J.  (U)  The Taskforce recommended and the government adopted 
a National Action Plan for TIP in March 2003.  All members 
(including NGOs) of the Taskforce were involved in developing 
the action plan.  The 2003 action plan has been disseminated. 
 A new action plan will be formulated with the conclusion of 
a Twinning Project with Germany and Austria on "Strengthening 
Institutions in the Fight Against Trafficking in Human 
Beings." 
 
WILSON