Tarlabaşı and Illegal Immigrants

Terrain Vague: Istanbul
Border Politics and City


The researches about the effects of globalization after 1990 and the transformation of border politics include also the geopolitical interpretation of the transformation of the world cities. To approach the relation between the citizens and space, to understand the stratified structure of the world city and to speak about the notion of identity need new analyses. Behzad Yaghamanian is a writer and researcher who moved years ago from Iran to New York. He has works on globalization in economical political file and he works on his book that is about the border politics and immigrants, refugees. His experience and thought brings new approach about the relation between the city and immigrants, refugees.

Behzad: First, I would like to explain why I started the project in Istanbul. I have been thinking writing an eyewitness account of the journey of migration for quite of few years. In the past two decades or so, new trend have emerged in the world of migration. My work focuses on the migration from southern countries to northern nation, from third world countries to the West. As the storyteller and biographer of these Muslim migrants on the road, I plan traveled through “transit countries,” visited camps and prisons where the clandestine migrants were detained, and lived with and followed them on the road.
For tens of thousands of migrants hoping to reach the West every year, Turkey is the first stop in the journey, the first gate to Europe. Turkey’s long borders with Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and its no-visa policy with Iran make it the favorite and convenient first stop on the transit route to Western Europe for a growing number of Iranians, Kurds, Iraqis, Afghanis, Pakistanis, and even Africans. Major illegal immigration to Turkey through the Van border has been going on in the past two decades. The Turkish land borders with Greece and Bulgaria have been major crossing points in recent years. An increasing number of migrants have been navigating the short waterways between Turkey and the Greek Islands.
Proximity to the countries of origin and similarities of customs and culture make Turkey a unique station where a large number of transit migrants remain for long periods, sometimes becoming a part of Turkey’s multicultural society, and spending their lives on a journey with no next destination. On average, transit migration through Turkey takes nearly four years. This is much longer than the time many migrants had expected to stay.Nearly 200,000 Iranian migrants, in particular, have failed to obtain legal or clandestine entry to other counties and have become the most prominent of the “unwanted citizens” of Turkey.
The Africans arrive through the sea, some after months of wandering in international waters. They come in large vessel. Many are cheated by the smugglers. They pay exuberant fees to be taken to Europe proper. Dropped off the ship on the coasts of the Marmaris and the Agean seas, they find themselves in Turkey, a gatekeeper of the European Union, a nation fearful of men and women with black skin. They live in the ghettos, endure racism and routine abuse in the hands of the police, and continue their journey with Muslim voyagers from the East. They meet in prisons and camps. They hire the services of the same smugglers. Together they cross borders. Their common fate and goal brings them together.

Pelin: What is the living condition of these people? I saw their home that they living in a very bad condition in Turkey

Behzad: The Africans live in separate ghettos, separate de facto “refugee camps” in the heart of the greater Istanbul. The Muslims, Sudanese and Somalis, were housed in safe houses in Aksaray. The Nigerians live in rat holes in Tarlabashi. Many posed as Somalis, hoping to be better treated by the Turks for being Muslims. I met many such Somalis in Istanbul. The Iranian, for the most part, live in Aksaray. They all live in run down tenements, and safe houses and transit homes rented by smugglers. Their Turkish landlords take advantage of them, use their vulnerability and benefit from them, force them pay 150 million TL for a small room with shared shower and bath with 10 others. The migrants are abused both by police, by the Turkish citizens, and by their smugglers.
After repeated failure to convince European authorities of their legitimate reasons for asylum, or the inability to payoff enough number of smugglers to move them from one border to another and land them somewhere in the West, they remain behind in Istanbul, and keep alive the hope of, someday, moving to the West. They do not step outside the boundaries carved out for their kinds, and maintain a shadowy life in Aksaray, Dolapdere, Zeytinburnu, and Tarlabashi. For long weeks and months, they stay in safe houses and unlivable tenements, spaces of control by the police and the men assisting the journey, the smugglers. They live in undeclared refugee camps, camps with invisible walls and fences.
Passed Istanbul University is Aksaray, transnational neighborhoods, bourgeoning, conflicting, happy, and sorrowful. This is the juxtaposition of two worlds: wealth, and destitute. Aksaray is a refugee ghetto, a transit neighborhood, a space within the larger Istanbul that houses the shadowy travelers, men and women who stay in their safe houses and desperately wait for their time to escape to the West.
This is an urban collage in the heart of Istanbul: gentrified streets filled with boutiques and shops specializing on textile and leader merchandise destined for markets in Russia, Bulgaria, and other countries of Eastern Europe; and filthy, rundown, gloomy, shadowy, and eerie existence in the back alleys. Burnt buildings, dark iron bars protecting the windows on the standing buildings, and the dark hallways and stairways give the passersby a sense of an underground world of those not even allowed on the margins of the society—the world of those the society hopes to forget and deny. This is a new world, a space with different aesthetic, language, looks, and the feel in the air—transnationalism in the heart of Istanbul.
Shops carry signs in English, Russian, Arabic, and Persian. Prices were denominated in dollars and euro. Boutique names resonate cheap imitation of famous brand names from New York City: Proud Sportswear, Juris Collection, Murat Collection, Ronaldo Sport Collection, Lisa Collection, Joan Jeans, Premier Life, Bonny Jeans, and a few other “collections.” The area is home to Russian and Moldavian prostitutes; transit migrants; pimps, smugglers, and outlaws; and the impoverished Turks, Kurds, and Roma carved out of the other Istanbul.
Beyond the shops and boutiques, and passed the main road stands the heart of Aksaray, a magnate to men and women from far away lands, a resting ground for the voyagers from the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. They come in the thousands, stay in cheap hotels or safe houses organized by their human smugglers, live a shadowy life, and hope to move on to the next stop in their long journey to the European heartland. They walk long distances, clandestinely cross borders, negotiate with the police and smugglers, endure hardship, and arrive in Aksaray. They wait, regain their lost strength, make plans for the next stage of the journey, and proceed with their dreams. Some succeed. Others remain behind. Aksaray becomes their last stop to Eden, their graveyard; a whirlpool that pulls them in, drowns them, and kills their hopes.
A human smuggler once said the following about Aksaray to me.
`Here [Aksaray] is like a swamp. Once in it, you cannot escape. I was not a smuggler when I came here. I was painting buildings in Iran and had a good life. But, I left my job, started doing business in the bazaar and began looking for treasure…One of the boys approached me and convinced me to go to Istanbul. He said there was money everywhere in Istanbul. I came here, worked as a laborer for three month, but my boss did not pay my money. I then came to Aksaray and saw many people speak Persian. I decided to join the other Iranians in Aksara. Soon I learned how to sell gold, hashish, heroin… I started illegal activities…
I was somebody for myself in Iran…I had a good family. But, now I am a smuggler. I have been here for a year. Non one knows how I spend my days and nights….There are three things I do not do: I am not a pimp; I don’t betray friends; and I don’t cheat people. But, I will do anything else possible. You ask me to go somewhere to kill. I will go with you. I will not say no! I came to Istanbul with one objective: to enter the city without money and leave rich. I did not say no to any job. If they asked me to sell heroin, I told them I had many years of experience doing that in Iran. I did not say no. That was the way to survive.`

Pelin: There is no camp in Turkey as far as I know.

Behzad: Yes. There are special camps for special migrants, Asylum seekers, for the most part, live in Istanbul, Ankara, and Van. In a strange way, they live in communities that resemble refugee camps. In a sense, the voyagers live in private refugee camps.

Pelin: Behzad, you follow a lot of people; you either cross with them the border or visit them where they go. How their identity and their attitudes transforms though their nomad experience? How the identity is re-shaped in those transit spaces?

Behzad: The question of shifting identity is very interesting. My Afghan friend who I met in Istanbul is a good example of this. He left Istanbul for Bulgaria; I met him in Sophia and than he left Sophia for Athens. I followed him and met him in Athens. I was able to watch him in three capital cities. In each place he had a different identity; that is; the identity was shaped by the surrounding, by the space. I mean by space geography, including geo-political, social conditions.
The long journey of migration is the site of multiple subjectivities. The migrant’s identity changes by crossing borders. The person’s concept of the self evolves. New realities—the state and its police, citizen’s attitudes towards the newcomers from afar, and the voyager’s ability to survive economically, albeit temporarily—create new identities. The perception of the self evolves. I saw Roberto’s multiple identities between different borders. In Istanbul he was the embodiment of fear, anxiety, and hyper alienation. He did not smile, did not talk to non-Africans, stayed home, ran from the police without having committed a crime, and lived in hunger; at times he did not eat for days. The Angolan refugee lived as a fugitive. “I will not come back to this country. I will take a knife with me and kill myself if I get arrested at the border,” he told me the last time we met in Istanbul. A few days later he fled to Bulgaria. He crossed the Turkish border to a new and temporary guesthouse on the road to his final destination, the United States of America.
In Athens, Roberto had a new persona. For the first time in months, he worked, sold merchandise on streets and bars, and earned money. He did not hide from the police, looked relaxed, and smiled frequently. He treated me to lunch the first day we met in Athens. “You are in my town now. You do not pay,” he said. I accepted the offer with joy. No longer waiting for handouts to feed his hungry stomach, Roberto hosted me in his town, the new place away from Istanbul, the place he lived and worked as a free man. The suffocating layers of identity, the refugee identity, were slowly fading away from his persona. Roberto was on the road to become a “normal person.”

Pelin: Kasýmpaþa, Tarlabaþý and Aksaray districts are placed in the -we could say- one of the center of the city where especially popular culture is the main trend. The immigrants and refugees are living in those spaces in a very different urban context than the citizens. How do you describe the minor or transit culture of those spaces? How do you see the relation of those districts to the center and what is the relation in general to the whole city?

Behzad: In Kasimpasa, Tarlabasi, Aksaray, or elsewhere, the refugees live in total isolation from the rest of their host community. They have minimal to no contact to the citizens of their communities. So, naturally, in terms of culture, be it popular culture or not, there is no share experience between the host and the refugee community. The refuges live in their cells, leave only when needed, and try to avoid contact with the others. Of course, I am speaking here of the dominant norm. There are exceptions indeed, minor contacts between the refugees and their very immediate neighbors do occur at times. The Africans of Tarlabaþý, for example, complain of racism. Their neighbors are not accustomed to the black skin. They do not trust them. The same is true in other places. The Iranians of Aksaray had an easier situation. There is a large Iranian business community in Aksaray. There are Iranian cafes, restaurants, travel agencies, etc. So, in some sense, there is a “Little Iran” in Aksaray. Life is a bit easier in the sense. Culturally, there is more of ashared experience between the Iranians and the Turks. Many Iranian transit migrants become hooked to pop Turkish music. I listened to Tarkan and other pop singer sin Iranian safe houses.
Overall, the places you mentioned are ghettos. Even the local residents of these communities do not have much of a shared experience with their surrounding areas. Look at Tarlabaþý. It is so close to Takism Square, Istiklal Cad, and some of the most hip and popular places in Istanbul. Do an experiment. Begin a walking from Tarlabaşı to Tunel. You feel you have through different countries. There is nothing in common between Tarlabaþý and Istiklan or Cihangir. The “local” residents of Tarlabaþý are mainly Kurdish, Roma, or very poor Turks. They live a different life. Walk through their streets and you see the replication of life in the southeast Turkey. I have seen sheep’s wool hanged on strings to dry up to be used in a local home-based (cottage industry) weaving and spinning. You cannot find this on Istiklal Cad. One morning, I spent a few hour photographing the everyday life of children in Tarlabaşı. I spent time with more than 10 kids on the streets. That is where they play, live, and grow up. They live in a community of children from their neighborhoods. In Cihangir, my neighborhood, children are never seen on the streets. They live in their isolated home communities. That is a big difference. These children grow up with starkly different cultures.

Pelin: What is the notion of "camp", do you think that a "transit home" or a district in a city could be a kind of camp where, a space where biopolitics is exercise in a different way by the system?

Behzad: A camp is a very peculiar place. It had many innate qualities. A camp is, by definition, a space for people with shared dramas: war refugees, victims of this or that violence, etc. On the other hand, again by definition, a camp is an isolated space. It is an enclave, separated from the society at large. Most camps are either built in the outstrips of bog cities, or outside small towns, or in highly guarded places inside cities. But, in all of these cases, the camps are guarded. Some are fenced by barbed wire. Some have armed security guards. Camps are never left unguarded. Moving in and out of camps is not always that free. In addition to these characteristics, a camp is also a protected space. That is where the residents feel protected from what brought them there in the first place. They are protected from violence, way, etc. Camps are also spaces of social control. The camp residents are under surveillance. They are watched, controlled by the police, guards, or soldiers.
Now, I said before that the Tarlabaşı, Aksaray, and other refugee communities in Istanbul are, more or less, like private camps, camps not controlled by the state authorities and their organizations. A safe house in any of these communities can have all of the qualities I just mentioned here. It is an isolated space. It is “safe” and protected. Of course, there are occasional raids by the police. The smuggler and the police control it. Here, I am basically talking about the fear of the police. It is “virtual” control.
(shorter version)

21.March. 2003,Istanbul
(german version as Unsicheres Terrain: İstanbul. Grenzpolitiken und Stadt - (Pelin Tan interviewt Behzad Yaghmaian über Asylanten-, und Migrantendasein in İstanbul) published in “self-service city: Istanbul”, book- german. Edited by StephanLanz/Orhan.Esen, metroZones 4,
B-Books, Berlin, ISBN 3-933557-52-6, December – 2004)