More and more people are leaving Turkey because of the bad situation. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain a visa for Europe.
Ankara – The ongoing economic crisis and poor human rights situation in the Türkiye cause more and more people to leave their country. Young people in particular see hardly any prospects. According to the state statistics institute TÜIK, the Youth unemployment at 19.1 percent.
Artists from Turkey do not get visas for concerts in Germany
Various Turkish sources report that it was just after the Türkiye election it has become more difficult for people in Turkey to get visas for European countries. Artists also find it difficult to travel to the so-called Schengen area, for example to give concerts there. These include Onur Akın, Volkan Konak and Erkan Ogur. The reason for this is said to be the uncontrolled influx of refugees, many of whom are said to have now received Turkish citizenship.
“We who give concerts all over the world cannot even get a visa for Europe as an unknown number of people entering Turkey have been granted citizenship. Our applications were rejected twice by Germany. That’s why we canceled our concert in Germany in May,” Volkan Konak wrote to his fans on Twitter.
The opposition party takes a similar view CHP. “Our citizens who want to travel abroad for business, education or treatment are concerned,” writes CHP MP Tahsin Tarhan on twitter. “They wait for months to apply for a visa and the number of refusals keeps increasing. The increase in the number of migrants and asylum seekers in Turkey is the main reason for the visa problem,” said Tarhan, who is also responsible for his party’s foreign organizations.
Also the ambassador of EU in Turkey, Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, seems to confirm this. When asked by journalist Ismail Saymaz from the newspaper Sozcuasked whether the European states had become even more choosy when it came to issuing visas for Turks because they were afraid they might apply for asylum, Meyer-Landrut answered “even more cautiously” – apparently because many would then apply for asylum in the European states.
Young people in particular want to leave Turkey
“Well-educated young people flee oppression for freedom and work for the money that is due to them. That’s why they get a visa and then apply for asylum,” says Saymaz. From a democratic point of view, this is the result of AKPgovernment that turned Turkey into an open-air prison and reduced the country to poverty. Erasmus students had applied for asylum after their time had expired. A recently published study by the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation found that 63 percent of young people wanted to leave the country – most of them even stated that they wanted Germany.
In his interview with Saymaz, Mayer-Landrut says that there is a road map with Turkey to enable visa-free travel. “There are 72 chapters,” says Mayer Landrut. One of them is the definition of terrorism. “In Turkey, the definition of terrorism is very broad. It needs to be defined more clearly. Turkey’s leaders know they haven’t implemented any of the standards.” Granting visa-free travel in an environment of oppression would allow anyone unhappy or not feeling free to leave the country.
president Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees what the Turkish media has dubbed the “visa crisis” as a plot against his government. “We will hopefully solve the visa problem, which has recently been misused as political blackmail, as soon as possible,” Erdogan promised after the Turkish elections.
Türkiye slips in various human rights rankings
In the current rule of law index of the non-governmental organization “World Justice Project”, the country now ranks 116th out of 140 countries. In the so-called According to the “Democracy Matrix” by the University of Würzburg, Turkey is ranked 132nd out of 177 countries and is thus in the category of “moderate autocracies”. It has also become even more difficult for the media in the country. Turkey is only 165th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index. (Erkan Pehlivan)
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