Istanbul to Illegality: Visa-Free Serbia a Hub for EU-Bound Turks
Omer urged his fellow travellers on.
“We all trust each other, we are all Easterners. We are all brothers and sisters,” he said. “One hundred, two hundred metres of swimming and we can cross the border.”
Omer was one of four young Turkish citizens, all in their twenties, trying to cross the Serbian border with Hungary near Backi Brijeg in October 2022. His family had sold the gold they had saved up for years to finance his journey to the EU. BIRN had accompanied them from the capital, Belgrade, to the border, and spoke again to Omer after he reached his goal – Paris.
“There’s a labour shortage,” he said of France. “The government also knows that. They need the illegal labour power.”
Omer left Turkey because of the economic strife that has characterised the latter part of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 21-year rule, with the value of the lira plummeting more than 200 per cent in three years and inflation skyrocketing by an official rate of 64 per cent last year, unofficially far more.
So too did his cousin, Onur, a masseuse who spent a year out of work before deciding to make the trip with Omer.
“I applied for jobs in hotels, the government and massage salons,” Onur said. “I was unemployed for a year. Then one of my distant cousins invited me to [work in] their tobacco shop, but they were also hardly making a profit. I wasn’t able to make a living even though we shared a flat in the shittiest part of the city.”
Onur reflects a worrying sense of hopelessness among Turkish youth, with more than one third of 18-24 year-olds unemployed, out of school, or not receiving any form of training, one of the highest rates in the OECD after South Africa and Brazil.
A number of European countries have reported an increase in Turkish asylum seekers; last year in Germany, there were nearly 24,000, representing a 200 per cent increase on the year before and putting Turkey in third place behind Syria and Afghanistan in terms of the origin of asylum seekers.
As a whole, in the 27 states of the EU plus Norway and Switzerland, 55,000 Turkish citizens applied for asylum in 2022, more than double the number in 2021.
Most are fleeing primarily for economic reasons, said Ahmet Erdi Ozturk, a professor of politics at London Metropolitan University.
“First is economics,” he said. “Former middle-class people are looking for new economic opportunities in Europe. Secondly, young people do not see a future in Turkey ruled by the autocratic policies of Erdogan. They see Europe as a salvation politically, socially and economically.”
While the EU continues to resist giving more visas to Turkish citizens, Serbia will likely remain a hub for illegal crossings, Ozturk said.
“EU countries do not give visas easily,” he told BIRN. “The EU thinks that if it gives tourist visas easily they will not come back to Turkey. Therefore, people use illegal ways to reach the EU.”
According to Turkish foreign ministry data, before the COVID-19 pandemic, on average roughly a million Turkish citizens a year applied for visas to travel abroad. In 2022, the number shot up to 3.5 million. The EU refused nearly 20 per cent of Schengen visa applications.
Concerned that migrants were exploiting more relaxed visa conditions in the Balkans, the EU urged several Balkan countries last year to revisit visa policies towards a number of countries, including Turkey.
“I hope Serbia is acting fast now,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in October last year after the EU reported that 19,160 people were detected illegally entering the EU via the Western Balkans, most through Serbia, the previous month alone. “There are criteria for being a member of the EU, and part of that is a common visa policy.”
