185K Turks Are 'Modern Slaves,' Index Says

A second Global Slavery Index, compiled by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, has been released, ranking Turkey at 105 out of 167 countries in terms of the fraction of the population trapped in modern slavery.

In terms of the absolute figures for modern slavery, however, Turkey came in at 28 on the list, with an estimated 185,500 people in such conditions.

While the word slavery usually has historical connotations, modern slavery is defined in the report as "one person possessing or controlling another person in such as a way as to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty, with the intention of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal." As such, modern slavery can include forced labor, people-trafficking, debt bondage, forced marriage and the sale or exploitation of children and slavery based on a person's descent or caste.

The Global Slavery Index also ranks countries by their governments' response to the problem of modern slavery. To compile this ranking, the report took the following response factors into account: "Survivors are identified, supported to exit and remain out of modern slavery; criminal justice mechanisms address modern slavery; coordination and accountability mechanisms for the central government are in place; attitudes, social systems and institutions that enable modern slavery are addressed; businesses and governments through their public procurement stop sourcing goods and services that use modern slavery."

In this respect, Turkey was ranked at 82, indicating that "the government has a limited response to modern slavery, with limited victim support services, a criminal justice framework that criminalizes some forms of modern slavery, has a national action plan and/or national coordination body, and has policies that provide some protections for those vulnerable to modern slavery."

Within Europe, the other countries that fell into this category of government response were Luxembourg, Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo.

In specific comments on Turkey, the report noted that in 2014 the country "recorded the highest absolute numbers of modern slavery in the region [Europe], reflecting high numbers of child marriage, forced labor and trafficking for sexual exploitation."

Turkey has not been entirely complacent on the matter in recent years, as a public awareness campaign titled "React to Human Trafficking, Don't Be Indifferent!" was launched with European Commission (EC) funding in June 2008. The two-year campaign, costing around 3 million euros, aimed to inform the public of the 157 Emergency Helpline, which people can use to report suspected victims of human trafficking.

Despite this effort, the US State Department's 2014 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report stated that "following government restructuring of its anti-trafficking program and a shift in leadership's priorities, the Turkish government's efforts to fight trafficking dropped precipitously," adding, "The Turkish interagency national taskforce on combating human trafficking has not met since 2012, and a draft comprehensive framework was again not enacted."

This drop in the government response to human trafficking in particular seems to be corroborated by the Foreign Ministry's website, which only features figures on the crime from 2004 to 2007.

As the US State Department report notes, "Ethnic Roma children, and increasingly children of refugee populations, are subjected to forced begging on the street," rendering the decrease in government response more worrying in the light of the more than 1 million Syrian refugees who have sought shelter in Turkey since 2012 and become a visible presence in Turkish cities.

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)