The workers’ children, especially if they were born in Turkey, face many problems.
Irregular Armenian workers in Turkey are perceived as leverage or only as a component of Ankara-Yerevan relations, and the humanitarian aspects of the issue are neglected, recent research has pointed out.
Research on the “State of Armenian Irregular Migrants in Turkey” was conducted by journalist Alin Ozinian in Istanbul, Antalya, Trabzon and Ankara through focus groups and in-depth interviews as part of a Eurasia Partnership Foundation project.
In her research, Ozinian concluded that irregular Armenian workers worry about fluctuations in Turkish-Armenian relations because any turn for the worse thrusts them into an unwanted spotlight, and politicians frequently make remarks in this respect, but this situation leaves the humanitarian aspects of the issue out of the account.
The number of irregular Armenian workers in Turkey is not clear; several sources indicate different numbers from 20,000 to 70,000, but a huge majority of them are women who work in domestic service, as baby-sitters and elder caregivers.
In a meeting at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) in Ankara on Wednesday, Ozinian said that most of those women were making around $500-600 a month and either staying in the houses where they work or renting houses in Kumkapı, İstanbul, which is known as an Armenian neighborhood.
Ozinian pointed out that the housing conditions were not very good and that sometimes more than 20 people were living in small houses. Many of them haven’t seen their relatives for a long time since they are not able to travel because of irregularities in their papers.
The workers’ children, especially if they were born in Turkey, face many problems, including being stateless, since there is no diplomatic representation for Armenia in Turkey and the children are not registered as citizens. The children are not able to attend school because their parents are irregular workers and they need to keep this fact hidden. There are schools in Turkey for the Armenian minority but because of Turkish law, only Turkish citizens can attend.
Ozinian said that these children -- she guessed that their number was around 600 -- were either being educated in the informal irregular classes established by the workers themselves or getting no education at all.
According to Ozinian’s observations, the Armenian women workers are perceived by Turkish society as closer to “Turkish culture” and they are sexually harassed less compared to women coming from the former Soviet republics.
Being perceived as closer to Turkish culture makes them preferable for Turkish employers, but Ozinian underlined that Armenian workers are still uneasy when working for them because they think that at any time the situation can change.
“Workers told me that while everything was fine, suddenly, because of a story in the media regarding Armenian-Turkish relations, their bosses can make disturbing remarks,” she said.
However, Ozinian added that the Armenian workers who work for Turkish-Armenian families also feel uneasy because they are looked down on and treated in a patronizing manner.
Ozinian underlined that this attitude might be related to the workers’ expectations of the Turkish Armenians, but workers still preferred to be employed by them because they believed they would not be reported to the police.
The research also shows that the Armenian workers over time start to question their relationships with their husbands, most of whom have not seen their husbands for a long time. The majority of the workers (96 percent) are planning to return after saving enough capital to invest in Armenia, but 4 percent of them thought that they had a life here and although returning was desirable, it would not be easy.
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