7B Urbanization 11.tif

This is the family I photographed in their Black Sea Yayla 10 years ago. They have been forced to move to Istanbul for work. Fatmagul Tarhan even came here by herself without a husband to get work in a medical records department of a hospital. They say living in the city is like a prison. In the yayla their doors were always unlocked and they were always in others houses. Here they have layers of security and don't know their neighbors. If they could have stayed on their yayla they...
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This is the family I photographed in their Black Sea Yayla 10 years ago. They have been forced to move to Istanbul for work. Fatmagul Tarhan even came here by herself without a husband to get work in a medical records department of a hospital. They say living in the city is like a prison. In the yayla their doors were always unlocked and they were always in others houses. Here they have layers of security and don't know their neighbors. If they could have stayed on their yayla they would have, they say. There are only 10 girls left in their village. The whole room of women were in agreement that boys leave to find a job and then come back to the yayla to find a wife and then take her to the big city. These girls go to the university... work as nurses or office jobs. There is a black sea society in their concrete canyon that feels like a soup kitchen. Twice a year they eat from huge pots of nettle soup and talk about what their agricultural lifestyle was like..Fatmagul Tarhan was determined to make a career on her own and stonewalled any attempts at marriage in her hometown while taking care of her siblings and grandparents...Turkey is primarily affected by internal migration. Istanbul was 2 million 30 years ago and is now 12 million. People I photographed in Yayla (Agricultural) lifestyle 10 years ago are now all office workers in Istanbul. There just isn't a good way to make a living in the rural areas anymore. In 30 years Turkey has gone from being 70 percent rural to 70 percent urban. The average in the world is 51 percent urban..Turkey is also a spinning top for migration to Europe from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Sudan. Sudanese go first to Libya and then on to Turkey. Turkey is very late to the party to deal with immigration and one of the factors for EU membership is that they need to deal with this. They are still working off a 1951 law that limits immigration to ONLY wealthy west Europe countries. Meanwhile Africa receives more refugees
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