Migrant Smuggling Data and Research

What makes migrant smuggling more complicated in the region is that
migrants in all three categories listed above may resort to the same human
smugglers either for entry or exit from Turkey. Besides, the boundaries between
these three categories are often very blurred. 24 The geographical limitation on
the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees that Turkey withholds – that is, not
allowing non-European asylum seekers who are accepted for refugee status
to settle in Turkey permanently – has further direct implications in migrant
smuggling, forcing some asylum seekers who have access to more resources
opt for human smuggling. 25 Ironically, however, all asylum applications made
in Turkey to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are
from non-European countries, and those accepted as refugees instead wait for
resettlement in a third country. 26
In line with the response of the international community in combating
migrant smuggling and trafficking, Turkey adopted two United Nations Palermo
Protocols on 18 March 2003, thereby accepting the broader definitions of
human smuggling and trafficking. For the first time, Turkish decision makers
then introduced heavy penalties for the crimes committed. 27 Accordingly, in
the Turkish context, two different categories fall under the field of smuggling:
(a) migrant smuggling; and (b) human trafficking. These two notions are
considered different crimes, since migrant smuggling is considered a crime against
the nation-State, whereas human trafficking is a crime against an individual
(International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), 2015). When
compared with the organized criminal networks of trafficking in persons, migrant
smuggling networks in Turkey tend to be more randomly organized with different
people doing diverse jobs, very mobile and spontaneous, and yet exploitative.
24
For example, a transit migrant may apply for asylum after some time and stay in Turkey much longer while
at the same time, work in Turkey without proper documentation. When a rejection notification is received,
an asylum seeker in Turkey turns into an irregular migrant automatically – either face deportation or resort
to human smuggling – and becomes another transit migrant. The blurred boundaries between the asylum
system and transit migration is partly attributed to the asylum regime in Turkey and partly due to the
increasing securitization of migration in Europe (see Baldwin-Edwards, 2006 for a similar discussion in North
Africa).
25
Turkey is signatory to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its associated
1967 Protocol, but one of two countries in the world maintaining the geographical limitation clause that only
makes it possible to consider asylum applications of persons from European countries. Turkey also uses it as
a political tool to negotiate Turkey’s stalled European Union membership process.
26
Asylum seekers in Turkey generally wait for a long time for their applications to be accepted with no
guarantee whatsoever to settle in Turkey. Once accepted as a refugee, resettlement options are also very
limited.
27
“Smuggling of migrants shall mean the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or
other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a State Party of which the person is not a national
or a permanent resident” whereas “trafficking in persons shall mean the recruitment, transportation,
transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion,
of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability, or of the giving of
payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose
of exploitation.”
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6. Turkey