United States Department of State has released its 2016 report on
Trafficking in Persons (TIP), where it classified Turkey as a country
making significant efforts in the fight against smuggling, urging Ankara to step up measures especially to prevent vulnerable groups from being subjected to sex trafficking or forced labor.
“We
want to bring to the public’s attention the full nature and scope of
the $150 billion illicit human trafficking industry,” U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry said in his statement published as part of the report,
underlining there was “nothing inevitable about trafficking in human
beings.”
Prepared by state department employees after a year-long
process, the report summarized the state of human trafficking across
the world and categorized states with respect to the progress they have
made or are likely to make in the near future.
According to the report, Turkey was placed among second-tier countries, which included countries like Croatia, Greece and Singapore, in addition to others like Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nigeria.
Tier
2 corresponds to countries with governments which do not fully meet the
minimum standards of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) but
are nonetheless making notable progress to meet those standards, the
state department said.
According to this year’s TIP report, Turkey stood out as a destination and transit country, rather than a source country, for sex
trafficking and forced labor where most victims were from Central and
South Asia, Eastern Europe, Syria and Morocco. It noted, however, that
Turkish women and transgender persons were also vulnerable to
trafficking, the latter also suffering from alleged discrimination by
state authorities.
The report underlined that displaced persons from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran were particularly vulnerable to trafficking in Turkey, especially as most of them lack legal access to the job market.
“Traffickers increasingly use psychological coercion, threats and debt bondage to compel victims into sex
trafficking,” reports both from Turkey’s government and
Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) noted, highlighting the importance
of issuing work permits to refugees and asylum-seekers while
acknowledging a January regulation which established a work permit
regime for Syrians under the temporary protection regime.
“An
increasing number of Syrian refugee children engage in street begging
and also work in restaurants, textile factories, markets, mechanic or
blacksmith shops and agriculture, at times acting as the breadwinners
for their families; some are vulnerable to forced labor,” the report
said, adding Syrian women and girls were vulnerable to sex trafficking, also those run by extremist groups.
“Some
Syrian girls have been reportedly sold into marriages with Turkish men,
in which they are highly vulnerable to domestic servitude or sex trafficking,” it stated.
According
to the report, women who were forcefully married to extremist fighters
were later compelled to join the ranks of the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant (ISIL) in Syria.
The TIP report also mentioned the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and quoted reports claiming youth were sometimes pushed to join the militant organization.
While
taking note of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government’s
efforts to tackle the problem, the report said the country’s
anti-trafficking action plan, which dates back to 2009, needed to be
updated and funding needed to be provided to operate shelters and
protective services for victims of trafficking.