ИСТИНА

The initial and most numerous type of economic migration from Russia to Turkey in the early 1990s was circular migration of Russian small-batch traders, entitled 'bavul ticateri' (suitcase traders) in Turkey and 'chelnoki' (shuttle traders) in Russia. The major prerequisites for development of this type of migration were: de-monopolization of external trade in Russia, facilitation of border-cross movement rules, and mass unemployment in the Russian public sector as a result of deep economic crisis, which pushed people for seeking alternative forms of employment. Turkey was chosen by Russian suitcase traders because of its liberal entry regime; geographical proximity; mass production of cheap consumer goods, textile, leather cloths & accessories, underclothes, shoes, etc., and the overall encouragement of exports of Turkish consumer goods by the State. In mid-1990s, the number of Russian suitcase traders was estimated up to 10 million persons, and Turkey was the most preferable destination. In this period, the annual scale of informal import-export operations of Russian 'chelnoki' was estimated up to 10 billion USD, which strongly exceeded the official bilateral trade. In Istanbul, numerous hotels, shops, factories, restaurants, entertainment sites, and transport companies appeared as a response to the business boom of Russian suitcase traders. The 1998 financial crisis and revision of the tax regulation in Russia in the mid-2000s seriously decreased migration of Russian suitcase traders; most successful of them transformed into legal import & trade companies while others went out of business. The paper presents a brief overview of academic literature on the phenomenon of suitcase traders' migration and concludes that it attracted minor attention of academics who have focused mainly on the roots and the scale of informal cross-border trade and its impact on consumer goods market in Russia rather than on its contribution to development of other types bilateral migration flows between Russia and Turkey and formation of a migration system connecting two countries. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap and presents the profile of Russian suitcase traders, their social and economic impacts, and the effect of suitcase traders’ migration on development of labor migration and tourism from Russia to Turkey. The conclusions of the paper deal with the great input of suitcase trade in emergence of the regional migration system which connects Russia and Turkey nowadays: (1) cross-border migration driven by economic reasons has become one of behavior options for Russian people; (2) former chelnoki can be found among small and medium-scale companies’ owners who continue making business with Turkey and therefore inspire business trips between the two countries; (3) opened by suitcase traders, Turkey has become a country of destination for hundreds of thousands of Russian migrant workers who find jobs in the 'Russian-speaking' sector of Turkish tourism, trade and service industries; (4) Russian tourists make a great deal of Turkish tourism incomes; (5) two-way migration of investors and entrepreneurs is also partly rooted in suitcase traders' migration who were pioneers in making business with Turkey.