A journey of more than 3,000 kilometers avoiding walls, mountains and thieves

The Hangedik military post is a rough and lonely place. Some barracks and a watchtower on a peak at 2,600 meters of altitude, protected by barbed wire, whipped by the wind and from which everything is seen in miniature: the Turkish villages to one side; to the other, the stony Iranian mountains and a couple of Revolutionary Guard barracks in which there is hardly any movement. In the middle of the Turkish base, a bust of Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, and a motto: "Borders are our honor." From this vantage point on the eastern edge of the country, the passage of smugglers, the possible infiltration of Kurdish insurgents and, above all, the irregular passage of migrants and refugees, especially Afghans, is monitored. To close the way to the latter,Ankara is working against the clock to build a wall along the more than 500 kilometers of border with Iran.

Already after the withdrawal of troops from the NATO mission in Afghanistan to Kabul in 2014, the number of Afghans fleeing the war and the Taliban multiplied. If that year, the Turkish security forces detained 12,000 Afghans at the border and in the rest of the country, in 2018 there were more than 100,000, and more than 200,000 in 2019. The pandemic significantly reduced arrivals. "Since the US announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan we have noticed an increase, but the numbers are still lower than in other years", explains Cuma Omurca, director of the Department of Migration in the province of Van: "Those who are arriving now left before from the fall of Kabul, so we believe that the flow of migrants will increase in the coming months ”.

The profile of those who come to Turkey is mainly that of young men, even adolescents, explains Ibrahim Vurgun Kavlak, of the Turkish Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM): “The Taliban consider any man who does not support them as a possible threat, so many families send them to avoid risks.

Although the number of Afghan families traveling in full has also increased ”.

It is a journey of more than 3,000 kilometers that begins in the cities or mountains of the Central Asian country, driven by the fear of war, misery and the revenge of the Taliban.

While the easiest route to leave Afghanistan is through its western border in Herat, the increase in

checkpoints

Taliban and the reinforcement of security in Iran make this route difficult, which is why, as confirmed by more than a dozen Afghans interviewed in recent days, traffickers prefer to cross them into Pakistan through the Dashti Margo (Desert of Death) of the province. southern Nimroz. The Pakistani Baluchistan, where they arrive, is a problematic region with activity by the Baloch insurgency and fundamentalist groups, but it is also the route used by drug traffickers to transport heroin to Iran, the same route used for human trafficking.

“It is a very hard journey, we were in the desert, without food or water, and then it took us 48 hours to cross the mountains [towards Iran]”, explains Halil Rahman, a 16-year-old Afghan: “In Iran we were passing from zulo in zulo until we reach Khoy [northwest], and from there we cross to Turkey ”.

The trip lasts around a month since, although within the countries, the refugees are transported in vehicles, the borders are crossed on foot through mountain ranges that exceed 2,000 meters of altitude.

The cemeteries of the town of Van, the first they arrived in Turkey, show the harshness of the trip: dead by freezing, falling, shot victims ...

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The new wall

On the border between Iran and Turkey, a gravel road and a new wall winding brightly in the sun, which the Turkish government has begun to erect.

To do this, a cement factory has been installed at the foot of the mountain that manufactures, in record time, blocks three meters high by three meters long and that the trailers climb with difficulty, escorted by armored vehicles from the Turkish Armed Forces.

The wall is advancing at 300 meters a day and already covers about half of the 534 kilometers of border that separates Iran from Turkey.

"The Iranian military is doing nothing to stop irregular migrants," complains a Turkish official to justify the need for the wall.

More information

• Turkey negotiates with the Taliban its continuity in Afghanistan

• Iran sees the Taliban as a trump card against the US

An Afghan refugee confirms this story. They are all compliments to the Iranian security forces: "They gave us blankets and cookies for the children." On the other hand, he relates, the passage to Turkey was horrible: “The Turkish gendarmes beat us and took the money I had. It was raining. We were thirsty and hungry and they left us in the rain while they harassed us with the dogs. Then they sent us back to Iran. And the Iranians took us back to Turkey. "

Several sources consulted maintain that the hot returns of Afghans to Iran have multiplied in recent months and several interviewed refugees claim to have been returned up to three or four times. It is the same illegal practice that the Turkish authorities accuse Greece of on its western border: the laws mandate that, before being deported, asylum claims submitted by migrants must be processed. Omurca denies that anyone is being returned to Iran and claims that deportations to Afghanistan have also stopped given the country's situation (more than 100,000 Afghans have been returned by Turkey to their country in recent years).

Therefore, the Afghans who are currently captured are placed in detention centers for months while waiting for their situation to be clarified. They are left in "limbo", denounces lawyer Mahmut Kaçan. For this reason, and to avoid possible returns to Iran, "they try to escape to the west as soon as possible." But it is not easy: the roads that leave Van have been filled with police checkpoints that must be circumvented by walking the route, at night, through fields and mountains. Sometimes they use small boats to sail the immense Lake of Van and thus reach the neighboring provinces; Last year one of those boats sank and its sixty occupants died.

Meanwhile, until it is their turn to escape from Van, they hide.

“They have disappeared from view, until recently you saw them in lines down the street.

Not now ”, explains the owner of a restaurant in Van.

They sleep in secluded alleys, in abandoned houses, under bridges over dry streams, or in collectors.

Even in cemeteries, because parks are no longer safe.

Halit, 21, who has joined six other compatriots, complains that the night before they were robbed by two men posing as policemen and taken to an alley to search them: they took 500 lire (about 50 euros) and a Mobile phone.

Thieves and scammers are a constant along the way, because how are those who are in a country illegally going to report?

“I have been waiting for the trafficker for several days.

I paid him 300 dollars [254 euros] to take me to Ankara [the capital of Turkey], but he has disappeared, ”laments Dost Mohammad, who lives in a house marked for demolition with his new friend, Abdulmatin, 17, who was robbed by robbers in Iran.

Every time they hear a siren or a noise outside, they fearfully look out the window, not the police or someone who can report them.

Hostile environment

The first goal of almost all Afghans is to reach Istanbul. The Turkish megalopolis of more than 17 million people offers more opportunities to go unnoticed and work. “In Turkey there are about 185,000 Afghans with temporary protected status and another 120-140,000 in an irregular situation. The former have the right to work, but only if the employers make the papers for them. Most entrepreneurs do not register them because it is cheaper for them to use them in black in textile workshops or in agriculture, "explains Ali Hekmat, an Afghan activist in Turkey:" So, if given the opportunity, almost everyone would prefer to go to Europe or Canada ”.

Furthermore, the environment in Turkey is one of growing hostility towards refugees, given the delicate economic situation that the country is going through, as the presence of almost four million Syrian refugees is likely to be perpetuated. Statements by several European leaders who have called for Turkey to deal with Afghans fleeing their country (for example, British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace proposed installing

offshore

centers

to process the asylum applications of Afghans in countries such as Pakistan or Turkey without even consulting Ankara first) have only further unnerved spirits. The opposition has thrown itself into the jugular of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, accusing him of being incapable of defending the borders and of turning the country into an immense refugee camp through secret pacts with the West. "My colleagues never talked about the Afghans, but now they are talking all day that if six million refugees are going to come that if we have not fought enough ... racism is increasing," explains Hekmat.

Kavlak, from ASAM, acknowledges that it is becoming increasingly difficult for Turkey to host so many refugees, but also criticizes the way in which Turkish media, artists and celebrities - through social media - and political parties are addressing the issue : “They give the image that there is a large [migratory] flow towards Turkey, but according to statistics the number of newcomers is lower than in the last three years.

[…] This causes many people who have never seen an immigrant or a refugee to develop negative prejudices.

So xenophobia and hate speech are on the rise ”.

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