Status: 07/22/2021 12:58 p.m.
More and more Afghans are leaving their country out of fear of the Taliban. Via Iran it goes first to Turkey. They have no prospect of asylum there – they expect a life in illegality.
On the way in eastern Turkey, only a few kilometers from the border with Iran. On a hill, barely visible, the silhouettes of some people stand out. They seek shelter in the shade of a bush. Than ARD team approaches, they want to run away. They only stop when they are assured that the police will not be here. The group is from near Kabul: a woman with five children and four other minors who fled for fear of the Taliban, they say.
With the help of smugglers, they had crossed the Turkish border from Iran. “Around one o’clock in the morning the smugglers fetched us from the accommodation and said: ‘Come on, let’s go!'”, Reports one of the boys. “The driver drove like crazy and had an accident. Then they just abandoned us and said: ‘You have to keep running now, we will collect you again at some point.'” That was more than twelve hours ago.
Suddenly a boy throws himself on the floor. Military patrols along the road a few hundred meters away in the valley. The others press themselves tightly together behind the bush. A little girl lies between them. It looks completely exhausted and dehydrated. The mother caresses his head. How things will go on for the people is unclear. They want to go further west, all the way to Europe.
Escape from the Taliban: Afghans are leaving the country
Katharina Willinger, ARD Istanbul, daily topics 10:15 p.m., July 21, 2021
A dilapidated apartment as a hiding place
The Alizadeh family from a neighboring province of Kabul made it to the Turkish provincial capital of Van. There they hide in a ramshackle apartment that lost their last money. The couple is sitting on a dingy mattress on the floor, next to them are three of their five children.
Father Azizullah, 56 years old, talks about her farm in Afghanistan. They sold everything in no time and fled when they heard that the radical Islamic Taliban were not far from their village.
After the NATO troop train, it took barely a week. The family belongs to the Hazara Shiite minority, and in the eyes of the Sunni Taliban they are considered infidels. “They’re just killing us Hazaras,” said his wife Amineh with tears. “We are no longer safe there. If they see us, they would just shoot us.”
12-year-old Sumeye sits quietly next to her mother and looks sadly at the floor. When asked how she is now, thick tears flow from her eyes, she presses her face against her mother’s shoulder. “I was very scared of the Taliban and that they would kidnap me. They do such bad things. I couldn’t have stayed there any longer, but I keep thinking about all the girls who are still there.”
No right to asylum
The family wants to stay in Turkey for the time being, the mother has a cousin in a province near Istanbul. But the chance of getting there legally is slim. Afghans have no right to asylum; unlike Syrians, they are not part of the refugee agreement with the EU.
Many Afghans therefore live in Turkey in extremely difficult circumstances. Illegally, with no rights or health insurance, they get by with bad paid jobs.
An encounter with smugglers
Those who can afford it therefore pay smugglers to continue their journey to the west of the country. The ARD team succeeds in meeting in one of their houses in the middle of Van. There they hide refugees who take them to Istanbul or Ankara. The living room is full of toddlers, a total of 35 people are currently accommodated here.
The smugglers take them to their destination in vans, cars, and taxis in stages, and in between they have to walk again and again to avoid roadblocks, says one of the smugglers, himself an Afghan.
They charge between $ 1,000 and $ 2,000 from Iran to Turkey. “The Iranian police get money from us so that they can let people across the border towards Turkey,” the smuggler explains the system. “Some of the Turkish police officers only take money, the others send people back to Iran. And then we send them back to Turkey, at some point it’ll work out.”
The escape route remains risky
Again and again, however, there are also fatal accidents with overcrowded vans or when crossing mountains. Mehmet Karatas is a lawyer at the Turkish human rights association IHD. He heads the office in Van and is closely monitoring the situation of the Afghans. His organization estimates that around 1,000 a day arrive in Turkey.
“In the case of the Afghans, everyone looks the other way,” says Karatas. “The EU acts as if it is none of their business, and so does Turkey. Yes, Ankara is violating its obligations, but it is not alone in this.”