Turkish police arrested eight people for allegedly smuggling people into Europe, after discovering that they were keeping 612 refugees and irregular immigrants in inhumane conditions spread over 55 homes in Istanbul.
As reported this Saturday by the Turkish daily Hürriyet, immigrants were handed over to the Provincial Immigration Administration to be deported after a health check.
Many of them suffer from various diseases, apparently caused by the unsanitary conditions in which they found themselves, says the newspaper, which cites police sources.
They are mostly refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan and Bangladesh, although there are also immigrants from other countries, such as Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco, Togo, India and Burkina Faso.
According to the ongoing investigation, for their trip to Europe each paid traffickers between 2,000 and 5,000 euros.
With the promise that they would reach their desired destination, they were illegally brought into Turkey across the border with Iran and housed in overcrowded, humid, poorly ventilated housing without minimum hygiene standards.
The operation was carried out by special teams, with helicopters, and on the basis of information from the Office for Combating the Smuggling of Immigrants.
Eight persons renting the houses for this purpose were arrested and also punished by a fine of 1,320,462 lire (about 85,000 euros).
In a statement, the Office of the Governor of Istanbul reported today that 18,781 irregular immigrants have been intercepted so far this year in the city of the Bosphorus, a figure that in all of 2021 reached 71,959 people.
All of them were deported from Istanbul or transferred to expulsion centers in other provinces to process their deportation.
In another order, the Turkish Police launched a simultaneous operation on Friday in 10 provinces to arrest a total of 105 people on charges of maintaining links with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Turkey's Kurdish guerrilla, or with civil organizations considered part of the network of this group armed.
The raids were ordered by the Prosecutor's Office of Diyarbakir, the 'capital' of the Kurdish-majority provinces in southeastern Turkey, and by mid-morning 66 people had already been arrested, while the rest were still being searched, reports the Turkish agency Anadolu.
The private agency Mezopotamya reports that there are several journalists in detention, including the head of the Kurdish weekly Xwebun, Kadri Esen and the reporter Ali Koçer, from the same media outlet.
According to the said agency, the judicial investigation focuses on events related to the last holiday of Newroz, the Kurdish holiday of spring, which is celebrated every year on 21 March and which in Turkey usually has a marked character of cultural and political vindication.
(With information from EFE)
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