ISTANBUL, Turkey — Shrouded by acrid smoke, a young Afghan
crouches sorting waste he has pulled from the trash bins of
Istanbul, anxious
that
Turkey will soon strip him of even this subsistence.
اضافة اعلان
"I start at eight in the morning and
finish at eight at night," said Issam Raffur, who has spent four of his 20
years in Turkey.
"It is very hard and poorly paid, but I
have no choice," he shrugged, smoke billowing from a fire barely warming
his makeshift sorting center on a soggy winter day.
Considered the poorest of Turkey's poor,
Afghans have joined Kurds, the Laz, Roma and other ethnic minorities and
undocumented migrants in doing work others snub.
For less than $10 a day, they roam the
streets of Istanbul, a megalopolis of nearly 16 million people straining under
the weight of a currency crisis and a flood of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan
and other conflict-riven states.
Diving headfirst into dumpsters, they dig up
plastic bottles, glass and other waste they then sort and sell in bulk — a
self-organized, unregulated business that keeps the city clean, and men such as
Issam fed.
But as public sentiment turns against
migrants and other foreigners in Turkey, the state-appointed prefecture of
Istanbul has declared this work bad for "the environment and public
health".
Issam and his friends suspect that what
Turkish officials really want is to put this potentially profitable business
under the control of a few, well-connected recycling firms.
"If the big companies take over, they
will saw off our last branch of support," said Mahmut Aytar, a Turk who
manages one of the small recycling centers on the Asian side of Istanbul.
"They will throw us in the ravine."
Speaking to AFP, Deputy Environment Minister
Mehmet Emin Birpinar did little to ease Aytar's concerns.
"Waste can be bought and sold, so we
have started to view it as a raw material with other uses," he said.
"After the price of raw materials increased, the value of recycled goods
has risen."
Women and children
Born in multi-ethnic southeastern Turkey,
Aytar, 28, launched his recycling business out of desperation after failing to
find work befitting his biology degree.
"This job does not require experience
or training. Anyone can do it, but it is mostly the people excluded by the
system who get involved," he said while watching his press machines crush
plastic bags and empty bottles.
After being shrunk into tidy bales, the
plastic waste is loaded onto trucks of small, independently run recycling
operators who convert them into granules.
Aytar said he runs one of 2,500 or so
impromptu recycling depots in Istanbul, receiving dozens of trash collectors —
called "cekcekci" (pronounced "chekchekchi" and roughly
translating as those who pull carts) — every day.
Tugging white, muddied carts filled with
paper, cardboard, plastic and bottles, they dart between honking cars and
pedestrian streams, earning 80-120 liras ($6-$9) a day.
Women and minors specialize in cardboard
boxes, which they find after the shops close at night, their babies sometimes
riding along in the carts' lower folds.
Each kg (2.2 pounds) of waste is worth about
a lira (seven US cents), and the bravest collect about 150kg of waste a day.
"They probably don't realize it, but by
being impoverished, they contribute to protecting the environment," said
Aytar. "They are helping society."
'Harassment'
They do so while living in destitution and
depend on the whims of the police.
In early October, security forces rounded up
more than 250 cekcekci in one day, releasing them after a few hours but keeping
their precious cargoes of waste.
"It's harassment," said Elrem
Yasar, who started managing his own depot after collecting trash for 12 years.
"Each confiscation costs me about 560
liras, which I earn in three days."
Istanbul prefecture officials defended their
crackdown.
"These cekcekci work illegally,"
one official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "It is up to the city to
take care of recycling and to collect revenues from it."
Conceding that his work has no legal status,
collector Ekrem Yasar said he would be happy to pay taxes if ever given the
chance.
"We are not asking for state handouts,
but if they take away our jobs, tens of thousands of people will be left with
nothing," he said, pinning his hopes on the first cekcekci union, which is
still in the process of being set up.
Most of the trash collectors and warehouse
workers live on-site in crudely arranged containers, huddling around open fires
in Istanbul's industrial zones.
"Imagine, life in the city," Yasar
said with a bitter laugh. "You think we are making money? Look, we only
have one teaspoon between us," he said while serving tea.
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