Afghan worker in Turkey reflects on crisis at home

After four years in Turkey, Nazar Nafasi says his work as a farmhand has allowed him to build a life far from the turmoil of his native Afghanistan.

The 23-year-old spends his days caring for cattle in Edirne, close to Turkey's border with Greece.

"If you ask why I came, there is a lot of war (in Afghanistan)," said Nazar, who traveled across Iran on foot with his brother to reach Turkey.

"We don't want anyone to die," he said. "I hope that one day Afghanistan will be in a good situation and we can return."

Nazar is an ethnic Turkmen – a group related to the Turks of Turkey – from the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Despite his rudimentary life on the farm, he is grateful to his employers for giving him a livelihood and money to send back to his family in Afghanistan.

"They take care of me like their own children, they look at me like their own siblings," he said.

"They give me my bread, my water, everything I need. They give me my money (that) I send to my family every month."

Notwithstanding Nazar's satisfaction with his situation, many of the 4 million migrants in Turkey – the vast majority of them Syrians – face exploitation by unscrupulous employers who pay low wages for long hours to unregistered migrants with no chance to complain to the authorities.

They typically work in low-paid jobs in the agriculture and textile sectors and have very limited, if any, access to health and social services.

In recent weeks, anti-migrant feelings in Turkey have erupted into violence following reports of groups of Afghans crossing the eastern border and growing economic hardships in Turkey, including high unemployment.

"Individuals employed in such jobs are paid far below the normal minimum wage," said Tacettin Sivrikaya, president of the Edirne Bar Association.

"These people do not have social security. I think it is a crime against humanity to employ these people from five or six o'clock in the morning to seven or eight o'clock at night, every day for six to seven months without a vacation."

There are an estimated 300,000 Afghans in Turkey and the government, which has been reinforcing security along the Iranian border in recent years, fears more following the Taliban takeover.

Edirne lawmaker Orhan Cakirlar, from the right-wing Iyi Party, said it was difficult to check the living and working conditions of unregistered migrants.

"If the state has not legally given work permits to these people, if these people have not entered this country legally, neither the humane aspects nor their working conditions can be checked," he said.