Turkey is mired in a showdown with Russian illegal immigrants: “This is some kind of horror”

Tensions are growing in Turkish resorts: hotel staff are on strike, local residents are picketing, Russian relocators are complaining about persecution by the Turkish authorities, and domestic “package workers” who have come to the hotel for a week or two are outraged that for their money they have to participate in “endless squabbles”.

On Tuesday, all of Turkey, both in the official press and on the Web, as well as in shops and on the beaches, discussed a 50-year-old hotel worker in Konakli (Alanya district), who threatened to set himself on fire right in the hotel if his demands were not met. A video with this threat is circulating on the Internet.

– This is some kind of horror, – the Russian guests of this hotel are indignant. This man lost everything during the February earthquake. Purely humanly, I feel sorry for him, of course. But we, for our considerable money, also do not want to watch fights on chairs.

According to our tourists, the hotel staff quickly “starts up”, it is worth someone alone “to step on everyone’s sore spot.” In this case, this is a decrease in wages caused by a general decrease in the income of the institution.

– Our hotel is half empty, – the Russian-speaking guide at this hotel throws up his hands. We don’t have a profit. And tourists out in tents on the beach live in trailers in parking lots.

– So it is possible?

– It was possible. But now, when foreigners receive income from our coast on Turkish territory, it will be impossible. Now the authorities will take any steps to fight any illegal business from tourists.

According to official reports for this year, from January 1 to August 15, Russians are in the lead among foreigners who visited the Turkish Riviera. Separate statistics exist for compatriots who bought real estate and received an “ikamet” (tourist residence permit) and simply bought housing, there are also more of them than foreign homeowners from other countries.

“All foreign homeowners are required to register it,” says Ufuk, an Antalya resident who recently sold one of his apartments to a Russian family. – It is the responsibility of the seller to follow this if it is a direct sale, and the realtor if it is an intermediary. Now all Turkish neighbors are asked to inform what is happening in the apartments and houses of the Russians. This has never happened before, because climbing into someone else’s house is simply indecent. But now the authorities are forced. Since your people assure that they buy for themselves, and they rent it to their own tourists, and even for short periods of no more than a week. They steal business from hotels and annoy Turkish neighbors. Our people do not like it when there are new faces in their common house every week.

According to an employee of the gendarmerie of the same resort province, door-to-door raids, already launched a month ago, simply cannot cope with the amount of work. There are a lot of Russians and their housing, and it is extremely difficult to figure out which Russians are there – the owners themselves or the tourists they let in for money.

– They all begin to prove that distant relatives, aunts, uncles and others – on condition of anonymity are divided in the resort gendarmerie. – They have Russian passports, relatives come with different surnames and there is no law not to let them in. But to figure out whether this is true relatives is extremely difficult and long.

In an unofficial field, Turkish law enforcement officials report that a decision has been made to act not among Russians renting their Turkish housing, but, on the contrary, among those renting it.

– They will simply be evicted if the surname for which the housing is registered does not match the surname in the tenant’s passport. People who paid money for this will, of course, get angry, admit their mistake and help punish illegal immigrants. And then if we call the number specified during the registration of housing, they do not pick up the phone.

Compatriots in Istanbul say that such raids are already in full swing: almost fifty illegally leased apartments have been sealed, most of them belong to citizens of the Russian Federation.

– And on TV they showed a whole apartment building, from where everyone is being evicted cleanly, – says Oleg from Moscow, who has been living in Istanbul for six months. – Some Arabs in overalls are being taken out of there, and all our people have surrendered to them.

And in addition to illegal housing and tents on the beach against the backdrop of empty hotels, the resort towns of the Turkish Riviera are suffering unprecedented price gouging.

– I have two children who love to run to dip several times a day, especially in such heat, – the Russian woman Alina, 37, who lives in Kemer with her Turkish husband, is indignant. – And all the beaches either strictly belong to the hotel and are fenced, or paid. The local tourism industry no longer knows how to get at least something from tourists, otherwise all dear Russians are taken away. Taxi prices have increased today, and tomorrow everyone is already discussing that “Russian taxis”, on the contrary, have fallen in price. And the Iraqis have already fussed over our people, they also rent out housing, they taxi illegally, they keep car services.

It’s been a week since Turkish beaches have taken over the Greek baton of “towel pickets” – locals oppose private traders collecting money for umbrellas and sunbeds on the beaches, and dot the beaches with twice as many of them as it should be, as a result of which there is “no place to spit.” Among them, according to our compatriots, there are also many Russians. But while ordinary Turkish inhabitants are chasing them with towels, the authorities of the resort province managed to win an impressive intermediate victory: foreigners were identified, caught, fined and expelled, who were engaged in another type of business popular among illegal immigrants – evacuation of emergency vehicles using a tow truck purchased jointly. The underground evacuators turned out to be a friendly criminal group of Russians and Ukrainians.