Cigarette Smugglers Also Smuggle People

Adnan R. Khan

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Recent refugee arrivals in Istanbul support Içduygu’s findings. They describe flights across the border that increasingly rely on locals, often people with experience in smuggling goods, who have only recently expanded into human smuggling. Ahmed says he was brought over by cigarette smugglers while others have said they accompanied weapons smugglers linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is fighting a bloody civil war with Turkish forces in Turkey’s southeast.