Abstract
Turkey is in a strategic position in terms of its geographical location. It is surrounded by seas on three sides, and there are only a few straits in the world that connect the two continents to each other to connect Asian countries to Europe. Combined with Turkey's strategic location, this makes Turkey an essential transit route in every activity in terms of both tourism and business resources. This strategic location of Turkey can be exploited by irresponsible and problematic elements from both inside and outside the country for both human trafficking and human smuggling activities. These groups of individuals or unions can openly collaborate with both internal and external parties due to the combination of many parties. Therefore, it is very crucial to continue the cooperation between the Turkish government and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to overcome these problems. This study will examine the work done in cooperation between the Turkish Government and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in dealing with these illegal activities.
TopBackground: The United Nations And The International Organization For Migration
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is an international organization dealing with international migration issues, one of which includes the crime of Human Smuggling or Human Trafficking. It is an intergovernmental organization and it is independent. It currently has 173 member countries and 8 observer countries (IOM, 2022a). The International Organization for Migration presently has offices in more than 100 member countries. Today, Turkey has one of the largest country offices globally with over 820 staff in 15 different locations across the country. This is, naturally, in line with the United Nations, which aims to create world peace, and with the goals of the International Organization for Migration, which aims to create peace in terms of international migration. The International Organization for Migration is also one of the important actors and partners of the governments of the countries in order to create a humanitarian and orderly migration that can be beneficial for all its members, as well as to address cases and problems related to world migration and to help find solutions to each of its problems. In this context, it is also one of the important actors in the fight against human smuggling and human trafficking crimes in Turkey. The International Organization for Migration is an international and intergovernmental organization that aims to ensure the orderly and humane handling of migration, promote international cooperation on migration-related issues, provide humanitarian assistance and help find practical solutions to migration problems. It is committed to assisting migrants in need, both refugees, internally displaced persons and other residents forced to leave their homes (IOM, 2022b). From 1991 to date, the International Organization for Migration's anti-trafficking activities in Turkey have focused on awareness-raising activities and prevention of acts of trafficking, protection of victims of trafficking through direct assistance to victims and institutional capacity-building of governmental and non-governmental actors, training and capacity-building of law enforcement agencies, and partnering across sectors and governments with budget assistance in the development of anti-trafficking legislation, policies and procedures and infrastructure improvements by improving access to justice for victims of trafficking (IOM, 2022c).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Migration: Is the geographical displacement movement of human communities by settling in another settlement unit to spend their whole or part of their lives due to religious, economic, political, social and other reasons.
International Organization for Migration (IOM): Is an international organization operating in areas such as emergency assistance, resettlement of refugees, assisting voluntary returns, migrant health, sending money and supporting legal immigration options.
United Nations (UN): Was established on October 24, 1945. It is an international organization established to protect world peace and security and to establish an economic, social, and cultural cooperation among the international community.
Illegal Human Trafficking: Is an unlawful act against humanity on a global scale. The use of the modern slavery analogy for the crime of human trafficking also highlights the importance of criminalizing unlawful acts of trafficking. Human trafficking, which is the exploitation of individuals for various purposes; it is also closely related to human rights, employment policy, public health, and immigration policies. At the same time, human trafficking crime threatens the border security of countries.
Irregular Migration: It means entering a country illegally, staying in a country illegally, or entering legally and not leaving within the legal time limit. Irregular migration is an issue that needs to be evaluated separately in terms of destination, transit and source countries. Irregular migration; for destination countries, it covers people who come to their country illegally or who come legally and do not leave within the legal exit deadlines; It includes people who cross the country borders by not following the necessary procedures when leaving their country for the source country. For transit countries, they are people who enter the country legally or illegally from the source countries to reach the destination country, and use this country as a transit country and leave the country's border.
Asylum Seeker: A refugee is a person whose application for asylum has been accepted, while an asylum seeker is a person who has left his country claiming to be a refugee but whose application for refugee status has not been concluded.
Refugee: As defined by the UN, a refugee is “a person who has a well-founded fear of being persecuted because of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and therefore leaves his country and does not or does not want to return because of his fear”. Immigration is a legal status.
Immigrant: A person who immigrates from one country to settle in another country. Legally, immigrants or immigrants concern at least two countries. One is the left country, the other is the settled country. Migration is an emigration for the country of departure, and an internal migration for the settled country. Those who migrate inwards are called immigrants, and those who migrate out are called emigrants.