Turkey began hunting Russian illegal immigrants: what to fear

The Turkish authorities have announced that they are proceeding with the deportation of Russians engaged in illegal tourism business on their territory, both direct (private ads on the Web about renting out housing and providing excursion and entertainment services) and indirect (intermediary services on the spot for Russian travel agencies). The last straw in the patience of Turkish hoteliers was a resonant scandal with 68 Russian children evicted from a hotel in Kemer into the street in the middle of the night.

The Turkish Ministry of Tourism announced the need to “urgently bring the Russian private sector out of the shadows” at the end of last week. And already on Monday, the Department of Tourist Information under the Governor of the Kemersky District announced the opening of a criminal case against a group of Russian tourists under the article “commercial activity without a license to carry out tourism activities.” Part of the group has already been detained and placed in the detention center of the Migration Department for subsequent deportation, the rest are being sought. According to the official statement, this will continue to be the case. At the same time, many involved in the tourism business from the Turkish side are sure that the reason for such “sharp gestures” is not so much the statement of their tourism minister as the scandal with the evicted children.

– We have an eastern country with innate hospitality, – explains the Turkish owner of a small hotel, lurking near the all-inclusive giants in Kemer. – If it were only the minister’s statement, then our performers would have stirred up only by the end of the season. At the height of the season, exposing illegal landlords or unscrupulous contractors is mired in scandals. Plus, there is an unspoken delicacy among Turkish hoteliers. If your large and regular client, like, for example, the Russian travel agency in question, suddenly owes a hotel, the hotel will wait patiently. And not only will he not inform the Turkish authorities, but even the debtor himself will be reminded only in the most extreme case. But the situation with the children destroyed this silent attitude. I’m afraid that now scandals will fall on us and you as if from a cornucopia.

Indeed, the hotel, which put 68 underage Russians on the street in the middle of the night, who arrived at it on vouchers for the Russian exit DOL, kept proud silence all the first days of the scandal, which has been going on since August 3rd. And only three days later, the owners began to respond to accusations of “bullying children” – and then in an unofficial field. And, finally, by Tuesday, August 8, when the organizers of the DOL declared that “the children themselves wanted to leave Turkey because of the terrible hotel,” the hoteliers’ patience snapped and they officially announced that the organizer of the Russian children’s camp owed the institution 75 thousand euros and another thousand dollars in small change (the hotel either gave this amount in cash to Russian accompanying children, since their cards did not work, or provided services on credit). After this recognition, the second hotel also spoke, where the children evicted at 2 am were moved only by 9 pm, and before that they slept on benches in the park. The owner of the second hotel said that the children’s accommodation was paid only until 5 August. And he expressed a suspicion that the organizers of such a children’s holiday probably expected that unpaid guests would not be thrown out because they were children. But the trick didn’t work:

– Our hotel is small, with all our desire we cannot receive guests for free, – said the owner of the first hotel, and he was immediately supported by the owner of the second.

Now both hoteliers are vividly describing the “impudence” of Russian entrepreneurs from children’s tourism on Turkish TV and in the media, at the same time mentioning that in the end, Russian parents took their children home at their own expense, and they had to pay not only for return tickets, but also for transfer to the airport. Turkish hoteliers intend to resolve the issue with Russian debtors in court, and Russian parents, who at first believed the organizers of the unfortunate holiday that the hotel was to blame for everything, now intend to sue DOL.

“The organizers first told us that they themselves decided to transfer our children from one hotel to another,” says one of the mothers, who returned her 13-year-old daughter home from Turkey at her own expense. – Like, there is bad service and conditions. They just couldn’t explain why it had to be done at 2 am. Yes, and the children said that these were not the organizers, but the Turks broke into the rooms in the middle of the night and asked them to be released. Even the counselors didn’t know. By the way, the counselors admitted that they were not paid either.

But the parents were ahead of the domestic Investigative Committee, which initiated an audit of the disgraced DOL in the wake of a post on social networks by the Russian Commissioner for Human Rights Moksalkova. By Tuesday, the investigation found that the employees of this travel agency “during the period from 06/19/2023 to 08/05/2023, having the intent to steal money from an unlimited number of citizens on an especially large scale, under the guise of providing services for organizing children’s recreation on the territory of the Republic of Turkey, concluded at least 30 civil law contracts”. The Investigative Committee confirmed that the DOL did not pay for the accommodation in hotel rooms of at least 90 children aged 6 to 17, which led to their eviction in the territory of a foreign state at night, thereby committing the theft of citizens’ funds in the amount of more than 1 million rubles which gave rise to criminal proceedings. During the audit, it turned out that the unscrupulous DOL concluded contracts not only for amounts from 80 to 100 thousand rubles (this is how much the “Kemer shift” costs in 2 weeks, depending on the age of the child), but also for larger amounts from 250 to 400 thousand rubles, which suggests that “camp places” were bought not only by parents, but also by intermediaries for resale. Similar figures also came to the attention of Turkish law enforcement officers.

“Russians who have moved to Turkish resorts for a long time, without a license to provide travel services, offer mediation on the ground not only to individual tourists, but also to normal Russian travel agencies who want to get cheaper services on the spot,” explains the Russian-speaking administrator of the hotel in Kemer.

To date, a criminal “tourist group” of 4 Russians has already been exposed, which rented water scooters to their compatriots who arrived on a tour package at a price of 320 euros (about 34 thousand rubles) for 3 hours. As a result of the operation carried out by Turkish law enforcement agencies, 6 scooters were confiscated from the offenders, two Russians were detained, and two more were put on the wanted list.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29088 dated August 9, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Get ready to move out!