It has been more than half a century since internal Anatolian migrants moved to this area north of Ankara Citadel Hill in search of work. Today almost every second person who lives along Altindag Street is Afghan. The simple Gecekondu houses that the migrants had built at the time still stretch up the slope. In most of the rest of Ankara they have been replaced by modern apartment buildings, but here they are inhabited by Afghans. Because nowhere in Ankara is living space cheaper. Five hundred Afghan families can afford the rents, including the many single men. Mustafa earns his living at the end of a back alley. The young Afghan starts his work at six o'clock in the morning and turns off the light at nine in the evening.Every day he bakes 1,500 Afghan-style flatbreads in the stone oven. For this he receives the equivalent of 250 euros per month.
Rainer Hermann
Editor in politics.
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According to unofficial information, more than half a million Afghans are living in Turkey. Almost all ethnic groups of Afghanistan are represented - Uzbeks, Hazara, Tajiks. Only not the biggest, the Pashtuns. They either fled to the Taliban or to Pakistan, says an Uzbek Afghan in Ankara. One restaurant along the main street is called Kabul, another after the historical name of the Persian-Afghan cultural area Khorasan. The two flags, the Afghan and the Turkish, are nowhere missing. Not even above the entrance to the narrow Bahar Market, the spice market. He only offers food from Afghanistan, Afghan rice, cumin, mung beans and other legumes. There are still enough supplies. However, since the Taliban came to power, supplies from Afghanistan have dried up,says the operator to the translator. He doesn't speak Turkish.
Hardly any illegal migration in winter
There are also fewer refugees entering Turkey.
In the years before the pandemic, even more Afghans came than in these days, says Erdem Aycicek from the non-governmental organization MSYD, which was founded in 2015 and cares for migrants and refugees across the country.
The private aid organization has a center nearby where it distributes food and clothes to those in need.
In 2019, 454,662 irregular migrants - with the Afghans as the largest group - came to Turkey, says Aycicek.
In general, Afghan asylum seekers made up the second largest group of refugees after the Syrians.
In winter, when the snow is five to six meters high on the Turkish-Iranian border, irregular migration from the east will almost completely come to a standstill. Then it will hardly be possible in Afghanistan to distribute aid to those in need, say experts with concern. They expect another increase in migration when the snow melts again in spring and the situation in Afghanistan has worsened.
The fact that the influx of irregular migrants has been lower than expected in recent months is primarily a result of improved border security.
The construction of a new wall along the 534 kilometer long border played a small part in this.
So far, an estimated thirty kilometers of the three meter high wall, which is also provided with barbed wire, have been built.
More effective is the increase in the number of border guards who pick up migrants at the border, record their data and then push them back to Iran.
Observers returning from the border have no illusions.
“Experience has shown that after a few days they try another path using a different path,” says one.
"Then they run again, for fear of buried mines, in rank and file across the green border."