Since 2018, Tajik residents have been capable of journey to Turkey for as much as 90 days with out a visa. That opening is closing quickly, with Turkish authorities asserting {that a} visa regime will probably be put in place beginning April 20.
The announcement got here within the wake of the assault on the Crocus Metropolis Corridor live performance venue on the outskirts of Moscow on March 22, by which 4 attackers slaughtered greater than 140 folks. The 4 alleged attackers, detained by Russian authorities and clearly tortured, are reportedly Tajik residents. Though the Islamic State’s Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISKP, has claimed duty for the assault, Moscow has contorted itself to hyperlink the incident to Ukraine, hewing to the outdated adage “by no means waste a very good disaster.” And officers in Dushanbe aren’t arguing both; in addition they identified how one can capitalize on a disaster.
Within the meantime, ethnic Tajiks dwelling in Russia – both as Russian residents or migrant employees – and different Central Asians have confronted elevated stigmatization, discrimination, and doable deportation. As RFE/RL reported in late March, as Russian authorities stepped up immigration enforcement, many Tajiks started to depart the nation on their very own.
The world is shrinking for Tajik passport holders.
On April 6, a call dated the day prior to this by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was printed. The announcement acknowledged: “It has been determined to abolish the visa exemption for peculiar passport holders of Tajikistan throughout their travels to Turkey…”
Tajik Overseas Ministry Press Secretary Shokhin Samadi advised Asia-Plus that Dushanbe had not been formally notified of the change. “Based on worldwide observe, the Turkish facet ought to have notified the Tajik facet prematurely in regards to the date of introduction of the visa regime for residents of Tajikistan,” he stated. “We notice that the Tajik facet has not but obtained such info via diplomatic channels.”
Samadi reportedly cited reciprocity, suggesting that Tajikistan is contemplating the introduction of a visa regime for Turkish residents in response.
On April 7, Turkey’s embassy in Dushanbe clarified, posting a discover that “Visa-free journey to Turkey for residents of the Republic of Tajikistan… has been lifted by order of the President’s Workplace” and including that the brand new visa regime, beneath which Tajik residents would wish to amass a sound visa earlier than touring, would go into impact on April 20.
“The visa regime is anticipated to be momentary,” the discover stated.
Based on Asia-Plus, at current there are actually 18 nations to which Tajik passport holders can journey with out a visa, with durations various broadly. These embody regional neighbors Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan (however not Turkmenistan), Russia and a variety of different former Soviet republics, in addition to Barbados, Haiti, the Philippines, Malaysia, and North Korea, amongst others.
Russia is a significant vacation spot for Central Asian labor migrants. It’s estimated that round 1,000,000 Tajiks are working in Russia at any given time, a good portion of Tajikistan’s 9.9 million inhabitants. Remittances to Tajikistan, as a share of GDP, reached 51 % in 2022 – $5.3 billion. And tons of of 1000’s of Tajiks have taken up Russian citizenship because the mid-Nineteen Nineties, with a substantial uptick in recent times. Based on official Russian figures cited by RFE/RL, “greater than 103,000 Tajik nationals obtained Russian citizenship in 2021. It marked a big uptick from 5 years in the past when solely round 30,000 Tajiks obtained Russian passports.”
A latest New York Occasions headline sums the state of affairs up: “In Moscow Assault, a Handful of Suspects however a Million Tajiks Underneath Suspicion.” Tajiks aren’t just below suspicion in Russia, as evidenced by Turkey’s choice to impose a brand new visa regime. Turkey has lengthy been a migration, and trip, vacation spot for Central Asians; it has additionally served as one thing akin to a protected haven (though probably not all that protected) for regional dissidents.
