Istanbul's Oldest Brothel Faces Closure Threat

Several sex workers assembled by the gates of Zürafa Street, Istanbul's oldest venue for brothels, to protest the closure six brothels in the red light district.

"We don't want to work dangerously and undocumented on the streets," sex workers said this afternoon in Istanbul.

Zürafa Street, Istanbul's most famous red light district, houses 15 brothels where two has been closed and four other face temporary closure.

"First they put us here not to work on the street and now they are putting us back to streets by closing our workplaces," a sex worker complained. She added that most of the workers had children and families to respond economically.

"We are all documented. They took our fingerprints and identified as 'general woman'. There is no way we can work somewhere else, nor out on the street," another sex worker said.

Why do brothels face closure?

Şevval Kılıç, a human rights activist working with sex workers, said the issue first came to surface when two undercover police agents visited a brothel as clients and claimed that the sex workers worked as "call-girls", which is forbidden by Turkey's official brothel regulations.

"The government is trying to dysfunction brothels since they are afraid to ban entirely. They have such a twisted moral. They reckon that prostitution will be over once all brothels are closed down. But they don't know that the number of sex workers working underground is far more than what you see here. And once these sex workers will be expelled from here, they are going to have to join their co-workers with no security," Kılıç said.

There are roughly 100,000 undocumented sex workers in Turkey. "While 40,000 among them applied for registration," Kılıç continued, "the government hasn't approved any registration since 2002. Many of these face violence from customers, with some of them getting killed brutally. Police usually gives tickets to undocumented sex workers, which adds up another economic burden. So they have to work even more to compensate."

Kılıç suggested that while brothels are not the best places to work, they provide shelter for hundreds of unprotected women.

125 sex workers currently labor in Zürafa Street

Turkey houses 52 documented brothels with roughly 3,500 documented sex workers. The red light district in Zürafa Street has been established in late 19th century and served as one of the oldest brothels in the country.

Zürafa Street brothels provides shelter for 125 women with 25 of them being transgender women. The number of working women in the district exceed 300 including security and cleaning staff.

"State offices reject our job applications"

Sex workers say that they work safely in the district, with routine health check-ups. They complain from the lack of alternatives while officers made the regulation. "They are closing down our workplace with no solid reasons and explanations," a sex worker said.

"Even if we are ostracized by the society due to our profession, we still have the human right to keep our dignity while performing our work," sex workers said in a statement.

The statement complained that most of the sex workers had to pay prices for their profession with none of their job applications being accepted by state offices.

"Maybe we won't be able to change our past but we can still raise our children by working here safely." (ÇT)