{"id":47141,"date":"2021-12-12T06:23:56","date_gmt":"2021-12-12T06:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=47141"},"modified":"2021-12-12T06:23:56","modified_gmt":"2021-12-12T06:23:56","slug":"libya-delays-list-of-presidential-election-candidates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=47141","title":{"rendered":"Libya delays list of presidential election candidates"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nISTANBUL: Shrouded by acrid smoke, a young Afghan crouches sorting waste he has pulled from the trash bins of Istanbul, anxious that Turkey will soon strip him of even this subsistence.
\u201cI start at eight in the morning and finish at eight at night,\u201d said Issam Raffur, who has spent four of his 20 years in Turkey.
\u201cIt is very hard and poorly paid, but I have no choice,\u201d he shrugged, smoke billowing from a fire barely warming his makeshift sorting center on a soggy winter day.
Considered the poorest of Turkey\u2019s poor, Afghans have joined Kurds, the Laz, Roma and other ethnic minorities and undocumented migrants in doing work others snub.
For less than $10 a day, they roam the streets of Istanbul, a megalopolis of nearly 16 million people straining under the weight of a currency crisis and a flood of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other conflict-riven states.
Diving headfirst into dumpsters, they dig up plastic bottles, glass and other waste they then sort and sell in bulk \u2014 a self-organized, unregulated business that keeps the city clean, and men such as Issam fed.
But as public sentiment turns against migrants and other foreigners in Turkey, the state-appointed prefecture of Istanbul has declared this work bad for \u201cthe environment and public health.\u201d
Issam and his friends suspect that what Turkish officials really want is to put this potentially profitable business under the control of a few, well-connected recycling firms.
\u201cIf the big companies take over, they will saw off our last branch of support,\u201d said Mahmut Aytar, a Turk who manages one of the small recycling centers on the Asian side of Istanbul. \u201cThey will throw us in the ravine.\u201d
Speaking to AFP, Deputy Environment Minister Mehmet Emin Birpinar did little to ease Aytar\u2019s concerns.
\u201cWaste can be bought and sold, so we have started to view it as a raw material with other uses,\u201d he said. \u201cAfter the price of raw materials increased, the value of recycled goods has risen.\u201d
Born in multi-ethnic southeastern Turkey, Aytar, 28, launched his recycling business out of desperation after failing to find work befitting his biology degree.
\u201cThis job does not require experience or training. Anyone can do it, but it is mostly the people excluded by the system who get involved,\u201d he said while watching his press machines crush plastic bags and empty bottles.
After being shrunk into tidy bales, the plastic waste is loaded onto trucks of small, independently run recycling operators who convert them into granules.
Aytar said he runs one of 2,500 or so impromptu recycling depots in Istanbul, receiving dozens of trash collectors \u2014 called \u201ccekcekci\u201d and roughly translating as those who pull carts \u2014 every day.
Tugging white, muddied carts filled with paper, cardboard, plastic and bottles, they dart between honking cars and pedestrian streams, earning 80-120 liras ($6-$9) a day.
Women and minors specialize in cardboard boxes, which they find after the shops close at night, their babies sometimes riding along in the carts\u2019 lower folds.
Each kilogram of waste is worth about a lira (7 US cents), and the bravest collect about 150 kg of waste a day. \u201cThey probably don\u2019t realize it, but by being impoverished, they contribute to protecting the environment,\u201d said Aytar. \u201cThey are helping society.\u201d
They do so while living in destitution and depend on the whims of the police.
In early October, security forces rounded up more than 250 cekcekci in one day, releasing them after a few hours but keeping their precious cargoes of waste.
\u201cIt\u2019s harassment,\u201d said Elrem Yasar, who started managing his own depot after collecting trash for 12 years.
\u201cEach confiscation costs me about 560 liras, which I earn in three days.\u201d
Istanbul prefecture officials defended their crackdown.
\u201cThese cekcekci work illegally,\u201d one official told AFP on condition of anonymity. \u201cIt is up to the city to take care of recycling and to collect revenues from it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISTANBUL: Shrouded by acrid smoke, a young Afghan crouches sorting waste he has pulled from the trash bins of Istanbul, anxious that Turkey will soon strip him of even this subsistence.\u201cI start at eight in the morning and finish at eight at night,\u201d said Issam Raffur, who has spent four of his 20 years in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}