An anti-refugee mobile game that is very popular ahead of the Turkish elections

Ahead of the second round of Turkey’s presidential elections on Sunday, the immigration issue has been the hottest of the two political camps.

The hostility towards immigrants is felt every day. Even if the current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wins, we will be subjected to racism and deportation at any time, a journalist at Aleppo TV tells DN over the phone.

Halab TV is a Syrian opposition television channel broadcasting from Gaziantep in southern Turkey. The journalist does not want his name to be mentioned in the article “to avoid trouble” in the country where he was a refugee eleven years ago.

According to President Erdogan, A road map is being drawn up after the elections to return refugees to Syria. His opponent, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, has gone even harder, promising voters that “once I take power, all refugees will be deported.”

The Syrian journalist, like his relatives and friends in Turkey, lives in constant anxiety, and does not want to return.

I don’t have a home to go back to in Syria. I settled in Türkiye and learned the language.

Besides that speech Inflaming hostility against immigrants, the Syrian journalist met with Turkish residents who walked around encouraging people to vote for whoever wants to go the extra mile to deport Syrians.

But what makes him angrier is the mobile game that became popular before the election, in which refugees are dumped onto trucks to send them home.

In the game, which has been on Google Play since September 2022, the player must tap as many people as possible who are illegally trying to cross the country’s borders. After that, the person is thrown into a truck traveling in the opposite direction, and then immediately taken back to the place where he came from.

The name of the game, Zafer Tourism, is reminiscent of a campaign by the Zafer party, which is known for its hostility to immigrants. The campaign aims to raise money to set up a tourist transport company that will bring refugees home on buses.

Already in January “The sale of tickets for Zafer Tourism Company’s one-way trips to Damascus has started,” party leader Umit Ozdag wrote on Twitter. Ozdag could become interior minister if the opposition wins Sunday’s elections.

In the description penned by game producer Gacrux Studio on the App Store, it says: “Protect your borders, don’t let them pass, focus on the target and leave the rest to the trucks.”

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