Half of all prostitutes visiting Turkey know exactly what their line of business is all about
Alina has been sold and resold 26 times during her 9-month stay in Turkey
These individuals — women varying in age and ethnic/social origin — are referred to as displaced persons. They appear at the Seaport of Odesa almost every Tuesday and Thursday.
The days on which the Port of Odesa hosts the Turkish ferries Gloria and Caledonia are special occasions for a group of people looking very businesslike, meeting them while keeping their distance. These are advanced representatives of Turkish business. They look concerned, rubbing their tired faces, lacking normal sleep, having had to make do with economy class accommodations, chain-smoking, and obviously nervous. Once cleared through Immigration, they quickly vanish in the crowd, taking with them their fear and shameful foreign experiences. And this repeats itself every week: seventy, a hundred, a hundred and fifty women bearing passports issued in Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Kazakhstan. They have been deported by the civilized Turkish authorities on charges of prostitution. A kind of second-hand sex market in need of a regular assortment updating. The latter has presented no problems over the past decade, considering that Ukraine and its closest neighbors have secured regular supplies, and that the number of such women is constantly growing, and that their age registers a permanent downward trend. In 2003 alone, over 2,000 Ukrainian and other CIS women deported from Turkey were registered at the Seaport of Odesa.
It is also true, however, that over 50% of the prostitutes surface in Turkey, Germany, Slovakia, and Hungary, acting of their own free will, being perfectly aware of what lies in store. Experts say that the number of women lured into such traps is somewhat smaller.
In 2003, the SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] department in Odesa learned about 23 women from various CIS countries being forcefully held at Turkish brothels. Painstaking work followed that revealed their identities and those involved in or with human trafficking. This data was forwarded to the Ukrainian Representation of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The Ukrainian embassy in Turkey was subsequently notified through diplomatic channels. After that, the SBU, Turkish law enforcement agencies, and the Ukrainian embassy carried out a joint operation, releasing seven Ukrainian woman from prostitution bondage and allowing them to return home. Using the resultant data, the SBU commenced criminal proceedings in several cases entailing legal punishment under the criminal code’s human trafficking clauses.
Criminal investigation revealed details of the Ukrainian women’s bondage in Turkey. One of the women told a story making even battle-hardened SBU officers shudder.
Alina (the name is fictitious — Author) went to Turkey with two other girls, supposedly as students to enrol in a Turkish university under an exchange program. They were enrolled, but were not destined to study for long. Taking a weekend stroll, the girls visited a caf О and ordered Coca-Cola. Then they were abducted, and Alina tells the story.
“For three days and nights we didn’t know where we were, or what had happened. Those three days would vanish from our memories. Later, we discovered that we had been sold for $3,000. A good price, considering that we were virgins. Then they raped and roughed us up.”
The girl’s story is fragmented, confusing in some respects; she constantly loses her train of thought. Her nerves are frayed. Alina was sold and resold 26 times while in Turkish bondage.
“It was Izmir first,” she recalls, “then it was Mersin. There were a great many girls. Most important, they were all young, aged under 20. Young girls are in special demand in Turkey and special precautions are taken to hide from the law. Some of the girls were aged between 15 and 16 years. Their employers would rape and humiliate them in every other way, keeping them in basements. No money paid, of course. Everything they’d earn from their clients, even souvenirs, would be taken by their pimps. No one could escape unless one knew Turkish.
“Most Ukrainian girls are found in the big [Turkish] cities, with a heavy tourist influx, like Antalya, Kusadasi. When sending a girl to a client, she would be warned to keep smiling, otherwise she would be beaten up she wouldn’t be able to stand afterward. And if she couldn’t stand she would be roughed up again. A client might fall in love with a girl and wish to buy her to keep her; the price would range between twenty and fifty thousand bucks, especially if the girl happened to originate from Ukraine or Moldova; they appreciate such hard-working and obedient girls. Russian girls rate lower.”
Turkish men prefer Slavic women — and not only as bed partners. Many cases have been recorded over the past several years with pimps falling in love with there charges, actually marrying them, even allowing them to share in the business — in which case the ex-white slave would be responsible for personnel selection, traveling to her country to recruit manpower, posing as a living example of what a girl can achieve by hustling her flesh in Turkey, no questions asked, no taxes paid.
Two hours in bed with a girl in Turkey cost between thirty and fifty bucks. $100 a night. A pimp may have up to fifty girls on call. Small wonder that this kind of trafficking should remain a markedly lucrative line of business, next only to trading in arms and drugs. US State Department records show that 700,000 to 1,000,000 persons fall prey to human trafficking every year. IOM points to 40,000 women and children. Experts say that human traffickers annually pocket $3.5 to 12 billion.
“A Caucasian [unescorted] woman is automatically regarded as a whore in Turkey,” says Alina. “A local ranking official will say I want a girl and will be replied instantly yes, sir, no problem, sir, because the law knows who to contact to get what is required. Girls subject to deportation experience many problems without ‘sponsorship,’ having to wait for three months on end. In other cases police officers contact pimps, saying we need something in addition to our official pay, so you’ll supply us a couple of girls for deportation. After that older girls are provided.”
There is close contact between the Turkish police and human traffickers; it is the main obstacle in implementing the new clause in the [Ukrainian] criminal code, envisaging legal punishment for trafficking in persons. In 2001, law enforcement authorities started eight human trafficking cases in Odesa oblast alone, yet none was taken to court — contrary to the general [official] belief that Ukraine has the best legislation to cope with the issue. Some law enforcement officers say [off the record] that such human trafficking is done in other countries, like Turkey. Making such traffickers face trial requires effort on the part of Ukrainian as well as Turkish authorities. No such collaboration is apparent. The SBU relies on its own officially unconfirmed sources, saying that only four such criminal cases have been on record in Turkey over the past four years. It is also true, however, that not all Turkish police treat Ukrainian girls in such a relentless manner, as evidenced by an operation carried out jointly with Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.
“I spent some time in a Turkish pretrial detention cell,” says Alina, “it’s a place where people are kept pending deportation. I was in my second month of pregnancy then. I had a medical certificate, but the Turks didn’t care.
“Inmates are treated especially brutally in Izmir. In Istanbul, you get a chunk of bread and 100 grams of brynza (sheep’s milk cheese) a day. No tea, and if you wanted to have a drink of water, you had to use the toilet. Then you are confronted by a Turkish police captain asking if you have received the money. You say you haven’t. That’s it. He’ll never visit unless you can make the payment. One of the girls was afraid to tell them she was pregnant. She was in bed, writhing in pain, about to die, because she had some problems with bowel movements. We would lift her to the window looking on the street, keeping her there so she could have some fresh air. The girls would sleep on the dirty floor [for want of room in the cell]. Some would get rheumatic. They would return home looking like old gray-haired women. I have visited places where the girls would be physically abused, raped, even killed. Dead girls were thrown from balconies. First suffocated with a pillow and then thrown out. Some would vanish without a trace. No one cares about us in Ukraine. Consular offices receive messages crying for help (please help me return home) and reply that you will have to pay for your passport and travel expenses first.”
There are several volunteer organizations in Ukraine meant to assist human trafficking victims. Here one can expect help trying to locate one’s next of kin abroad. In addition to the IOM, there is the International Women’s Rights Center La Strada Ukraine, “a non-governmental organization in Ukraine with a bi-directional goal: working to prevent trafficking in women and helping the victims of trafficking.” In Odesa oblast, the IOM, La Strada, and another NGO called Faith, Hope and Charity set up a Victimized Women’s Relief Center. The project was titled Stop Traffic. According to project coordinator Olha Kostiuk, a small percentage of such female deportees apply to the center, but all are provided with food, lodging, clothes, and medical assistance.
“Do you know how many women are like Alina?” asks Olha Kostiuk, adding, “Two girls visited us recently. They had traveled to Antalya on vacation and visited a local discotheque, meeting young fellows who then sold them to a pimp for $500. One of the girls would be resold fifteen times afterward. In another case, a mother was willing to sell her 8-year-old daughter.”
In the times of Kyiv Rus’, Tartar nomads would steal young and pretty Polovtsian and Rusyn girls, then sell them to slave traders in Constantinople (currently Istanbul). Yet all those Yaroslavnas had glimpses of hope, expecting a prince of Kyiv to come to their rescue. What about today?
